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TOWER ON THE SITE OF 

THE OLD FORT OF NORUMBEGA. 

SET UP IN 1889. 



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THE 



Defences of Norumbega 



A REVIEW OF THE RECONNAISSANCES 



Col. T. W. HIGGINSON, Professor HENRY W. HAYNES, Dr. JUSTIN WINSOR, 
Dr. FRANCIS PARKMAN, and Rev. Dr. EDMUND F. SLAFTER 



A LETTER TO JUDGE DALY 

President of the American Geographical Society 



BY 

EBEN NORTON HORSFORD 





BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

CCie EtoerBilie PreBB, CDamtriliffe 



TJkivbksitt Pkess : 
John Wilson and Son, Casibbidob. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Peoblem of the Northmen 7 

What the Critics admit and What they deny 8 

The Battle-field 10 

commtlnicatlons from the custodians of the preserve 12 

Leif's Expedition from Greenland 16 

Rev. Dr. Slafter's Published Views 18 

The City and Country of Norumbega 24 

Extent of the Country 25 

Dr. Parkman 27 

The Sailor, David Ingram 28 

Andrew Thevet 28 

Jean Allefonsce 31 

Was there a City of Norumbega? 32 

List of Maps 33 

The Earliest Norumbega on this Series of Maps 34 

The Signification of the Latitudes 36 

Identity of Cape Ann with the southern Capb Breton of Allefonsce . . 37 

What Allefonsce said 40 

The Weight of the Authority 41 

Errors in estimating Longitudes and Distances at Sea 43 

The Relation of Allefonsce to the two Cape Bretons 44 

The Latitude of the Mouth op Norumbega River 52 

Another Nantasket and another Cohasset described by Champlain ... 54 



IV TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

FAQB 

Cape Bebton and St. Johan, — oue Cape Amti 57 

Local Map of Cape Ank 58 

The Mouth of Charles Rivek variously indicated 59 

Plymouth Habboe 59 

Cape Beeton, the Cavo de Tngla Teeea of Cosa, and the Cape Ann of 

Peince Charles 60 

Naeeativbs of Persons who have visited the Countet oe City of Noeumbega 62 

Veeeazano visited the Boston Back Bay 63 

The Testimony of Champlain to the Existence of the City of Kobumbega 

on the Chaeles 67 

Transition Period in regard to Norumbega 70 

Hakluyt's Discourse on Western Planting 72 

WiNTHROP's Map of 1634 74 

What remains of the Walls op Norumbega 75 

What has been established 75 

A Resume from another Point of View 78 

A Summary of the Argument in another Form 80 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS. 



PAGE 

^J Memoeiai. Towee at Foet Noeumbega and the Insceiption on 

THE Tablet Frontispiece 

■' Dams, Docks, and Whaeves of the Ancient City op Noeumbega on the 

Chables Rivee at Wateetown, in Massachusetts 2 

N Plan of Noeumbega, with Fisheries on Stony Brook 7 

-.• Teeeaced Hill-side and Aeea op Bowldees at the Mouth of Ipswich Rivee . 7 

Amphitheatre neae Bird's Pond, Belmont 9 

Articles found neae Leif's Landing-place 13 

. SoLis Map op the Region of Vineland and the Colony of Noevega ... 22 

SoLis Map op Noevega in Eueope (Noeway) 23 

Paradiso, Refugio, Anguileme, Noeumbega 30 

; "Rivee plowing theough a Lake into the Sea" 31 

. Was theee a City op Noeumbega in the Forty- third Degeee? 33 

Paet of Map of Wateetown, the Site op the Ancient City op Noeumbega . 34 

Relations of Allefonsce to the two Cape Bretons 45 

Equivalents between Cape Ann and Cape Cod 49 

Equivalents op the Rivee Chaeles 51 

Map from " Voyages of Champlain." The Cohasset and Nantasket at the 

Mouth of the Saco 55 

Bellero's Map, 1554, having Canal St. Juan (St. Julian) of Gomez .... 57 
Gloucester Harbor. Coast Survey Map showing the Canal discoveekd 

BY Gomez 59 

Cosa's Map, 1500 61 

Transition Period in regard to Noeumbega 70 

Heliotype Copy of Wintheop's Original Map of 1634 76 

Dauphin Map (Descelaee) 1546 80 



DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 



Judge Daly, President of the American Geographical Society : 

Dear Sie, — You may recall that in my Story of the Discovery of 
the Site of the Ancient City of Norumbega, at the special meeting of 
the President and Council of the American Geographical Society held 
at Watertown in November of 1889, I treated the chief results at which 
I had arrived as fulfilments of predictions which I had not hesitated to 
make, in the light of legitimate scientific deduction, from the Vineland 
Sagas, aided by my study of the related literature and my researches 
in the field. 

In this paper I shall give what will be seen to be confirmation of 
the convictions expressed in my earlier communication. It will consist 
of materials that are almost independent of the course of argument 
which I last year pursued. They will be largely maps and records, 
which tell a story of themselves essentially coincident with that submitted 
at Watertown. 

It may not have escaped your recollection that in my letter to you 
of June, a year and a half ago, under the title of " The Problem of 
THE Northmen," I was led to the exclamation, " Is Massachusetts a 
Preserve?" I find myself obliged a second time to turn from the line 
of my researches to that of my personal defence ; and in so doing, the 
phrase I have cited seems as suited to my present needs as it was to 
my first. I even see in it a twofold quality that had not earlier at- 
tracted my attention. It has its humorous as well as its serious aspect. 



2 DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 

Why not look at it from both sides ? It may enliven the discussion. 
Whether as a query or as an expression of surprise, the phrase may 
to some have seemed a chance shot. It will be seen, however, that the 
shaft found its target. 

The recent setting up of the Tower and its Tablet of Inscriptions at 
the mouth of Stony Brook, with the palpable object of drawing atten- 
tion to the earthworks of what, in the literature of the geography of 
the sixteenth century, had been called a Fort, and which I believed 
to be one of the seats of a great Norse industry, had, it cannot be 
denied, the air of conscious possession of the field. My right to such 
possession has been challenged, in terms which, whether welcome or 
otherwise, have effected a desirable end, — they have disclosed the limit 
of the resources that may be brought to bear in a charge on the 
defences of Norumbega. 

The dispute of my right has had another effect. It has directed par- 
ticular attention to the ancient seaport of Vineland at Watertown. It 
has perhaps contributed also to the transfer, not necessarily unfortunate, 
of the assumed claim which has been made to exclusive right of judg- 
ment upon the weight of evidence in this field from the exercise of a 
relatively few to whoever may care to study the subject on the spot. 
The physical remains of ancient structures deemed essential to the proof 
that Northmen once dwelt in the valley of the Charles, have been found. 
They can be seen and examined by any one. Their place is settled. 
They are not inconsiderable in extent. The very citadel that is to be 
held or abandoned is pointed out. It is at Watertown, which I hold to 
be the site of the ancient city of Norumbega. This is denied in terms 
that cover all evidences whatever, not only of the presence of North- 
men in the vaUey of the Charles, but on the American Continent south 
of Davis' Strait. The terms of this denial are not wanting either in 
precision or the air of conviction. 

The situation may not be wholly the subject of regret. Possibly in 
this sweeping denial and a reply lies the only way in which a newly 



DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 3 

discovered historical verity can be established. A truth of recent advent, 
that is to prevail, like an exotic in the plant world, as we all know, 
finds its texture hardened and toughened by exposure successively to 
winds from all quarters. If its support be feeble, it may for the time 
be crushed by the violence of the assault; but if it has genuine and 
adequate foundation, it will finally assert itself In this way the roots 
of plants and of truths gain deep and lasting hold. Let us accept the 
inevitable. The truth must be fought for. There must needs be assault 
and defence. The story of the Northmen can claim no exemption from 
the general law. 

The preliminaries have taken place in proper order. 

A considerable number of gentlemen of recognized authority in the 
early history of the Commonwealth have assumed what may be regarded 
as the role of Custodians of the Preserve, and risen to proclaim, each from 
his own standpoint, the inviolability of the ground I have invaded. 

The language in which they refer to me, directly or indirectly, as the 
aim of their communications, identifies me beyond question. Of course, 
I must play my part. I am reconciled to the unavoidable, and not without 
a measure of content, — except, possibly, with the style of the weapons 
used. I may try to be resigned even to this. To be sure, I have been 
surprised. I had not believed such a kind of surprise profitable to the 
critics ; but they doubtless know best. 

It will be interesting — amusing — one of these days to look over a 
record of the charges against me for having attempted, in my fortunate 
leisure and opportunities, to widen the base of the glory of the State of 
my adoption There are charges against me of " cartological perver- 
sion ; " ^ assertions that my papers are significant mainly in the " study 

1 Peterman's Mittheilung (contributed by Ruge), Hefte 9, 1890, echoes the arraignment by 
the author in the "Narrative and Critical History of America," on the charge of "cartological 
(sic) perversion." (In the letter of June, 1889, I assumed this " cartological " to be a misprint for 
cartographical, which is a recognized English vpord.) Of the article in the " Nation " of May 3, 
1888, p. 368, in the column of Book Notices, I have spoken in the "Problem of the Northmen." 
Its source is obvious. Agnosco stylum. 



4 DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 

of psychology;" that those historians only find evidences of the presence 
of the Northmen in Massachusetts " who are distinguished for exuber- 
ance of imagination and redundance of thought; " that the idea of evi- 
dence of any kind that Northmen ever came south of Davis' Strait is 
" abandoned except by a few enthusiastic advocates ; " that I am trying 
by unworthy means to impose upon children (not to say grown men and 
women) my views on the subject of the discovery of America by North- 
men; ^ that I rely upon evidence which at the best is only " insufficient and 
trivial;" that my authorities are untrustworthy, httle known, or vague 
and uncertain in statement, — and so on. And these sweeping charges 
are made by gentlemen who conceive themselves entitled to claim that 
their naked, adverse opinion shall be accepted as competent authority 
in a matter of geography, while there are countless maps and charts, 
and the testimony of discoverers and explorers, which, carefully examined, 
may he found to hold as I do. 

The fate that has attended my researches is not, however, without 
precedent. It might be considered improper in me to allude to instances 
in the history of geographical discovery; but there is, in another field of 
research, an old and familiar illustration of the reluctance with which new 
truth is generally received, — for example, in the fate of Harvey, who dis- 
covered the circulation of the blood. He conducted experimental researches, 
and published the results to which they led him. He was credited by 
the critics of his time with adopting absurd views after trivial research. 
But he was wise enough to expect that the magnificent discovery he had 
given to the world would not be accepted by his contemporaries, especially 
by those past middle age. 

Harvey was a man of the rarest accomplishment as a scientific inquirer. 
His learning and skill were recognized; he was the chosen physician of 
two sovereigns of England. When his great discovery was announced, 

^ " The little clique devoted to the Cult of the Norse Discovery of America, which they are striv- 
ing by every means, legitimate or otherwise, to impose upon the rising generation," etc. — Henry W. 
Hatnbs : Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1890, p. 339. 



DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 5 

he was discredited, sneered at, persecuted, lampooned, pitied; copies of 
his elaborate papers were heaped in bonfires and burned ; he was virtually 
driven from the profession. By whom, do you ask ? I answer, By many 
of the most distinguished — yes, and learned — of the medical fraternity 
of his age. How could this have been, one naturally inquires. The reply 
is near at hand : They might have made the discovery themselves. As 
they were competent, and did not, no one could. This was the legiti- 
mate conclusion of his critics. We explain it by saying that such con- 
duct is consistent with what we know of human nature. It has been 
said, with a hint not always deeply concealed, that the human nature 
of the individual, like that of the race, changes slowly. In time, how- 
ever, the world came to accept, and believe and profit in, the discovery 
of the circulation of the blood. 

Can any one who offers to show evidences of a birthday for the colo- 
nization of the basin of the Charles earlier by six hundred years than the 
advent of the Puritans expect to escape the penalty appointed for his 
audacity ? 

One need not pursue the theme. It is a very old experience, and not 
confined to any one country or time. Let me accept at once the re- 
sponsibility of all with which I may fairly be charged, and brace myself 
to the consequences. I need not refer to the discovery of the Landfall of 
John Cabot in 1497, and the guess-work — not to say more — of Sebastian 
his son, nor of the clearing up of the truth of the narratives of Verrazano 
and of Gomez, which in general terms I have more than once placed in 
print. They belong to another field. I am now to consider only the 
work in connection with the Northmen. Here is a general summary : 

It is, I believe, true that I was the first to discover that the Land- 
fall of Leif Erikson was on an island once at the north end of Cape 
Cod, now joined to the mainland, but still existing at the time of 
Cosa (1500), Euysch (1507), AUefonsce (1542), and Gosnold (1602); the 
first to trace Leif's sail thereafter across the mouth of Cape Cod Bay 



6 DEFENCES OF NOEUMBEGA. 

and along the coast from the Gurnet, past Cohasset and Nantasket, to 
Boston Harbor, where he grounded on an ebb tide, and later, with the 
incoming flood, passed through the entrance to the Boston Back Bay, — 
the Hop of Thorfinn, "a small land-locked bay, salt at flood tide and 
fresh at ebb," — the small lake three leagues around of Verrazano, " the 
lake through which a river [the Charles] flowed from the land to the 
sea," according to Leif, — to the site of his house at Gerry's Landing 
in Cambridge; the first to recognize in the Sagas the exploration of 
Charles Eiver by Thorwald; the first to identify the Furdustrand pur- 
sued by Thorfinn around the curve southward from Kjalarnes (Cape Cod) 
to Nauset Harbor, and a few leagues beyond to a second bay; the 
first to identify the strait against Chatham as the Straumfjord of Thorfinn ; 
the first to identify the extension of the present Monomoy as the 
Straumo (Island of Currents) outside of the Straum^ord of Thorfinn ; and 
lastly, to show that his party did not go southward beyond the elbow of 
Cape Cod. It was also my fortune to discover the great fisheries of 
Stony Brook,^ including the more than four acres of area, evenly paved 
with closely and skilfully adjusted massive bowlders, resting on the ex- 
panse of deep vegetable mould at the bottom of the valley ; also to 
find and explore the artificial canals strewn throughout the basin of the 
Charles ; also to discover the site of the ancient city of Norumbega, with 
its walled docks and wharves, dam, fishway, and miles of stone-walls 
along the Charles below, stiU in remarkably good preservation, once 
serving great Norse enterprises, and now more or less in use as under- 
lying or otherwise connected with prominent industries of the historic 
village of Watertown. 

I need not refer in this connection to the wealth, philological and 
ethnological, that through these researches has been brought to the 

1 From such accounts as I have read and heard, I am persuaded that the pavements along 
the shores at Pemaquid in Maine, and the masses of angular rocks and bowlders at the mouth 
of Ipswich Eiver, which I have had photographed with the adjoining terraces, ofier a field for 
archseological research second only to that of Stony Brook, as of possible settlement by Northmen, 
and devoted to the same industries that were pursued in the basin of the Charles. 






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DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA 7 

student of Massachusetts history. I am afraid I should be thought ven- 
turesome if I were to betray my estimate of the richness of the field 
opened up to archaeology — not of Massachusetts alone — by the discovery 
of Norumbega, and the not unworthy pride the heirs of the Pilgrims and 
Puritans will yet take in the possession of this gateway to treasure infi- 
nitely transcending all the material wealth which Whittier's Norman Knight 
believed to be in the " Barbaric City." 

It is not, I know, altogether a light thing to carry back through so 
many centuries the birthday of a realm. But as I should do no violence 
to my own convictions if I were to intimate that I regard the deter- 
minations I have made as additions to the early history of Massachu- 
setts and of America, so I believe, that, having been led to give time 
and effort to establish these convictions, I am in duty bound to stand 
in their defence. 

I need not go further. If at all, I am unquestionably a poacher of 
degree. 

If this be a sufficient acknowledgment of my offences, in view of 
what has been directed against me personally, let me return to the more 
serious phase of the — 

Problem of the Northmen, 

To dispute my views, there have appeared in the columns of a leading 
newspaper of Boston ^ the communications to which I have referred. They 
discredit the conclusions at which I have arrived in a field of geographical 
research, after several years of uninterrupted investigation, with every co- 
operation I could command. 

Among the writers who have done me the honor to differ from me 
and publicly to express their dissent, is the Rev. Dr. Edmund F. Slafter, 
the venerable editor of Beamish's Translation of certain of the Vineland 
Sagas for the Prince Society's Publications ; also of its edition of Cham- 
plain's Voyages, to which he prefaced a carefully prepared memoir of 

1 The "Boston Evening Traveller" of Dec. 28, 1889. 



8 DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 

the great explorer ; also of the life of Alexander, Earl of Sterling, whose 
possessions by royal gift once stretched away westward on either side of 
the St. Lawrence and its tributary lakes, and beyond them to the Ver- 
milion Sea, — the Gulf of California. In addition to these publications of 
the Society of which Dr. Slafter was one of the original incorporators, 
he is the author of much other most useful work. Among my critics and 
censors also are Dr. Francis Parkman, Vice-President of the Massachusetts 
Historical Society, the classic historian of the Pioneers of France in the New 
"World, and the author of many brilliant volumes in the same field that 
have placed him in the front rank of men of letters; Dr. Justin Winsor, 
the editor of the "Memorial History of Boston," and of the "Narra- 
tive and Critical History of America;" Prof. Henry W. Haynes, whose 
contributions to Ethnology and Archaeology are well known, and to 
whose earlier expressions of dissent and those of Mr. Winsor I have 
called attention in my letter of June, 1889, upon "The Problem of the 
Northmen;" and Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, whose great ser- 
vices in various fields of literature are as familiar to the reading world 
as is his gallantry in the late war, and his chivalry wherever truth or 
right has appeared to him to be assailed. 

What the Critics admit and What they dent. 

Most of these writers do not seriously question that the Northmen 
may have discovered the continent of America somewhere to the south- 
west of Greenland, and may have remained in the neighborhood of their 
Landfall for a few years. This they deem possible. Such an admis- 
sion is conservative and safe. Such a frame of mind is consistent, of 
course, with almost any measure of scepticism in regard to precision 
of statement. 

The proposition to which they have allied themselves is this: — 
They hold that trustworthy evidence of the presence of the North- 
men, such as the traces of Tiuman handiworJc, or other arch«ological testi- 
mony, has not hem found, and (by some of these gentlemen it is held) 



DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 9 

never can be found, in New England, as the ground has been carefully 
and adequately examined. 

These conclusions might doubtless have been expected, in view of 
the special fields of labor in which these writers have so long been 
successfully engaged. Their labors have been naturally confined largely 
to the study or consideration of what is to be found in hoohs. It is 
not much to perceive, on a little reflection, that we do not look in 
books /or descriptions of zvhat has not been seen. The principal way in which 
knowledge can be gained of the presence of still existing memorials of 
the Northmen on our shores, as yet not recognized, is by looking where 
the impressions may have been made, — in the f eld. There, if they exist, 
we may hope to find, with thoughtful consideration of what can have 
survived the incidents of time, the traces of material structures properly 
to be ascribed to the Northmen. To be guided to the general field, one 
might be expected in a question like this to take advantage of the 
writings of the early Scandinavian explorers, who claim to have visited 
Vineland. The thoughtful student would consult also the history of the 
geographical terminology, in connection with the native languages, of 
the region conceived to have been occupied by the Northmen. Besides 
these, there is another branch of philological evidence connected with 
cartography whicli will be opened up in the progress of this letter. 
Not one of these lines of investigation seems to have attracted the sus- 
tained and profitable attention of my critics. 

Nevertheless, they have found what they are willing to put in print 
in defence of the trust they have assumed, and I ask you to look 
at the significance of it as a demonstration against the ancient city of 
Norumbega.^ You will see with what measure of care they have studied 
what, in common with others, they have had opportunity to read. 

1 I do not propose in this paper to consider the Landlall of Leif; that and the site of his 
house in Vineland will soon follow. I shall, however, be compelled to borrow some of its illus- 
trations to meet my present needs. I repeatedly introduce certain maps, for reasons that will be 
sufficiently obvious. They carry conviction, where without them the best text would be difficult 
to understand. 



10 defences of norumbega. 

The Battle-field. 

The burden of the present letter is the determination of the identity 
of the site of the historic city of Norumbega with that of Watertown. I 
have, in the " Problem of the Northmen " and in various paragraphs in 
other papers, pointed out with some degree of vagueness — not always 
unpurposed — that the Landfall of Leif was on Cape Cod, and his house 
on the Charles; and I recognize that the proofs I have offered on these 
points are rather incidental than carefully set in order and prepared to 
carry clear conviction. My paper on these themes, though long since 
nearly through the press, has been forced aside. It seemed necessary to 
reply to the personal reflections to which I have been subjected, and to 
make known without unnecessary delay the discoveries of the physical re- 
mains — the works of engineering and the masonry — I have found in 
the basin of the Charles. 

In the story of the discovery related to you on the completion of the 
Tower, I have told, as already intimated, how I was conducted by hints 
in the Sagas and personal exploration in the field to the site of Norum- 
bega. I glanced only at the arguments resting on scanty cartography 
and the literature of geography. One of my wishes has been that 
those who differed from me might be led to present, against the views 
I hold, the arguments that had proved satisfactory to themselves. In 
this wish I have been gratified. The world, or that small portion of it 
interested in the Discovery of America by the Northmen, may now know 
on what foundation rests the scepticism of certain of the learned men 
who assume to be qualified to pronounce an opinion on this subject. 

The city of Norumbega, as I have held, underlaid the modern Water- 
town. I recall again the miks of stone-walls whose construction may be 
traced to the Northmen. They begin just above the United States Arse- 
nal. In places they have been undermined or removed. In the main, 
they are nearly continuous on either side of the river — much better 
preserved (doubtless repaired) on the north side — for about a mile, 



DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. H 

expanding at Watertown into docks, wharves, a fishway, and a dam, at 
the head of tide-water. 

It may be claimed to have been ah-eady shown, in my earlier com- 
munication, that the dam of rounded boivlders — field-stone — of which all 
the other walls are dependencies, was the work of these early colonists 
of Massachusetts, — the Northmen. The communication which I had the 
honor in November a year ago to present, through you, to the American 
Geographical Society, traced the origin of the dam to an industry of the 
Norsemen, — or rather, before I had seen them, deduced the dam and 
seaport, with the docks and wharves, as indispensable requirements for 
the conduct of a great Norse industry, of which glimpses are given in the 
Vineland Sagas. The occasion and the time at my command did not per- 
mit the evidence in adequate detail of the correctness of my position. 
That I propose to submit in this communication.^ 

The time is not distant when all who have the needed leisure to in- 
vestigate the subject will acquiesce in my demonstration — I give my as- 
sent to nothing less — that Leif landed on Cape Cod in the year 1000, 
and built his house on the Charles near the Cambridge City Hospital; 
and that his countrymen and their descendants, for centuries, conducted 
extensive industries in the basin of the Charles and elsewhere in New 
England, of which Norumbega is one of the keys and the monument.^ 

1 To this end, mainly, I have arranged on detached sheets suites of maps — heliotype copies — 
constituting absolute facsimiles of early authoritative works, many of them rai-e. Each sheet of 
maps is designed to aid the student in understanding the line of investigation 1 have pursued, 
in regard to one or two points only, bearing on the presence, many centuries ago, of a colony 
of Northmen in the basin of the Charles. It was inevitable that single maps and important 
individual facts should be repeated. 

^ Joshua Toulmain Smith remarks that some of Thorfinn's party remained in Vineland. Gudrid, 
so Kohl divines, told the authorities at Rome of the beautiful new country in the west, Vineland 
the Good, — " Vinland det Goda," — and about the Christian settlements made there by Scandi- 
navians. Sweyn II., King of Denmark, told Adam of Bremen (see " Church History," 1070), 
of the Island where grapes grew wild, and corn grew spontaneously, of which intelligence had 
been brought him by trustworthy Danish subjects : " Praeterea unam adhuc insulam recitavit a 
multis repertam in illo Oceano, quae dioitur Winland, eo quod ibi vites sponte nascuntur, vinum 



12 DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 

I do not forget that others may not feel the force of the evidence of 
cartography and of geographical nomenclature as I do. To them there 
will come, in proper sequence, the narratives of personal visitors to the 
site of Norumbega in the sixteenth century. To those who cannot believe 
that the Northmen were in the valley of the Charles until there be laid 
before them the demonstration of the precise latitude of the points in 
question, there will be supplied in the progress of this paper the needed 
conditions for the removal of their last doubt. 

Let me indulge the hope that all who, with little or no careful investi- 
gation, now so confidently assert their declarations against the presence 
here of early Northmen, may have the satisfaction, in common with others 
happily more free to accept new views, of seeing the time when it shall 
be difficult to find in Massachusetts a man who did not " ahvays Mow tliat 
Northmen settled somewhere ahout the basin of the Clmrles." 

Communications from the Custodians of the Preserve.^ 

The letter of Colonel Higginson gives his views of the purpose which 
the ancient ditches at the mouth of Stony Brook may have subserved, 
— some hydraulic experiments of the early colonists ; speaks of the rela- 
tive interest he found in the photographic illustrations of some of my 
papers, as compared with the engravings of the " Northern Antiquaries " 
of fifty years ago, and with some kindred criticism concludes as follows : 

"Personally, I should like no archaeological discovery better than one which 
should place the haunts of the Northmen among these hills and meadows where 
I played in childhood; but I can see no evidence for it. We are all indebted 

optimum ferentes. Nam et fruges ibi non seminatus abundare nos fabulosa opiuione, sed certa 
Danorum comperimus relatione." Expeditions to Vineland at the beginning of the eleventh century 
are said in the Sagas to have been both " profitable and honorable." Nordenskjold, who has twice 
visited Greenland, and has given us the supposed site of the dwelling of Eirik Kaude and of Leif his 
son, at Brattahlid, says the Northmen were here — in Vineland — for more than three hundred years. 
He wholly acquiesces in the view that the Northmen became largely merged in the Indian tribes, 
of which we have abundant evidence in local names, and in other forms which I cannot enlarge 
upon here. 

1 In the "Boston Evening Traveller" of Dec. 28, 1889 













a 



a*^ 






DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 13 

to him [Horsford] for calling attention to an interesting conundrum in local 
antiquities, but I cannot see that he has contributed anything towards its solution ; 
and he was certainly led into a little unfairness in the titlepage of one of his 
pamphlets, where he seemed to attribute to Mr. Winsor a sentence written by 
Mr. George Bancroft, which Mr. Winsor had only quoted with approval." 

Possibly. Let us look at the measure of the unfairness. I submit 
first what Mr. Bancroft said (p. 312, vol. iii., 1840). It carries the mark 
of the confident conviction of the venerable historian : ^ — 

" Scandinavians may have reached the shores of Labrador ; the soil of the United 
States has not one vestige of their presence." 

1 Even Homer was said at times to nod. There is precedent for almost anything in the way 
of mistakes among the writings of our best men. There was even a "vinegar" Bible. The 
habits of research which permitted the statement found on p. 312, vol. iii., 1840, and to which 
Colonel Higginson and Dr. Winsor have referred, belong to a class not inaptly illustrated on 
the next page but one to that referred to, of the "History of the United States" (p. 314). 
Mr. Bancroft there remarks : " It is a curious coincidence that among the Algonquins of the 
Atlantic and of the Mississippi, alike among the Narragansetts and the Illinois, the North 
Star was called the ^ Bear."' 

In the margin are these references : " R. Williams : see Le Clercq's Relation de la Gaspesie, 
152-153 ; Charlevoix, iii. 400." 

Turning to Roger Williams, on page 21 he says : " 2. As the Greekes and other nations, and our- 
selves call the seven starres (or Charles Waine, the beare), so do they Mosk, or Paykannawaw the 
beare." And on page 80, we find : " Mosk or Paukunawaw [sic], the Great Beare, or Charles 
Waine, which words, ' Mosk or Paukunuawwaw ' [sicl, signifies a Beare, which is so much the 
more observable, because in most languages that signe or constellation is called ' the Beare.' " 

Le Clercq says : " Though our Gaspesiens are so ignorant, that, as we have said, they can 
neither read nor write, they have nevertheless some knowledge of the Great and the Little Bears; 
which they call, the first, Mouhinne, and the second Mouhin-chichte, which means in our language 
substantially the Great and the Little Bears." 

Charlevoix (vol. iii. p. 400) says: "They give the name of 'Bear' to the four principal 
stars of what we call the ' Great Bear ; ' the three which compose its tail, or which are the 
train of the Chariot of David, are, according to them, the ' three Hunters,' which pursue the Bear. 
. . . The Indians of Acadie name the whole simply the great and little Bears. . ■ . The most 
part of the Indians call the polar Star ' the Star that does not move.' " 

The definition of Charles's Wain found in the Imperial Dictionary is, " The seven brightest 
stars in the constellation called Ursa Major, or The Great Bear." 

The constellation of the Great Bear, or Ursa Major, had apparently been first mistaken by 



14 DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 

What Mr. Winsor said (p. 95, vol. i., " Narrative and Critical History 
of America ") is this : Referring to what Mr. Bancroft had published — " to 
the intent that though 'Scandinavians may have reached the shores of Labrador, 
the soil of the United States has not one vestige of their presence,' is true now as 

WHEN FIRST WRITTEN." 

What the titlepage of my letter of June 1, 1889, gave as the " opinion 
of Justin Winsor" was this : — 

" Though Scandinavians may have reached the shores of Labrador, the soil of the 
United States has not one vestige of their presence." 

Mr. Winsor in his recent communication relieves Mr. Bancroft, Colonel 
Higginson, and himself in the following passage, which I quote from his 
communication in the " Traveller " : — 

" There is not a single item of all the evidence advanced from time to time, which 
can he said to connect hy archoeological traces the presence of the Northmen on the soil 
of North America south of Davis' Strait. Arguments of this kind have been aban- 
doned, except hy a few enthusiastic advocates." 

Of the qualifications which underlie this repetition of judgment, 
it may be mentioned that, besides the vast editorial work, requir- 
ing more or less of geographical accomplishment, upon the eight folio 
volumes (some forty-foiu: hundred pages in all) of the individual origi- 
nal researches of others that go to make up the "Narrative and Criti- 
cal History of America," Mr. Winsor has himself been a prominent 
contributor to the work. He has, indeed, produced, among his latest 
papers, one of nearly a hundred closely printed folio pages, entitled 

Mr. Bancroft for that of Ursa Minor, in the tail of which is Polaris, the North Star ; and this 
constellation had been mistaken for a single star. It is a singular instance of the hurried ex- 
amination of original authorities by a most learned man, of bad proof-reading in the first 
revise, succeeded by indifierent, or a scarcity of careful, readers, — otherwise the error had been 
earlier pointed out. Whatever the explanation may be or may have been, it is clear that Mr. 
Bancroft's violent judgment on the Problem, however in keeping with the method of research of 
the times in which it was written, can-ies with it a clear intimation of the caution with which his 
statements on this theme should be received. 



DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 15 

"Pre-Columbian Explorations," which purports to have exhausted the 
literature relating to the expeditions of the Northmen to Vineland, with 
the result we have seen. 

Thus, after the eight folio volumes of "Critical History of America" 
have been written and published, we have this result announced at once 
in the first volume of the series, and the last in point of time : 

" There is not a single item of . , . evidence . . . [of] the presence of the 
Northmen on the soil of North America south of Davis' Strait." 

To this conviction Mr. Winsor's method of geographical investigation 
has conducted him. 

Professor Haynes says : — 

" There is the same sort of reason for believing in the existence of Leif Erikson 
that there is for believing in the existence of Agamemnon : they are both traditions 
accepted by the later writers. ... It is antecedently probable that the Norsemen 
discovered America in the early part of the eleventh century ; but that discovery is 
confirmed by the same sort of historical tradition, not strong enough to be called 
evidence, upon which our belief in many of the facts of history rests." 

The likeness referred to has been recognized by Vigfusson between 
the works of Homer and the great poems of the Heroic Age of Scan- 
dinavia, — such as the Eddas, — but not before, so far as I know, between 
the Iliad on the one hand and the hgs of merchant-ships preserved in the 
Vineland Sagas on the other. 

That one may appreciate the weight of this argument of Professor 
Haynes, compare the first two stanzas of Cowper's Iliad with the open- 
ing paragraphs of Leif's Expedition to Vineland, in the Saga of Eirik 
Raude. They read as follows: — 

ILIAD. 

Sing, Muse, the deadly wrath of Peleus' son 
Achilles, source of many thousand woes 
To the Achaian host, which num'rous souls 
Of heroes sent to Ades premature, 



16 DEFENCES OP NORUMBEGA, 

And left their bodies to devouring dogs 

And birds of Heav'n (so Jove his will perform'd) 

From that dread hour when discord first embroil'd 

Achilles and Atrides, King of Men, 

Who of the gods impell'd them to contend ? 

Latona's son and Jove's. For he, incens'd 

Against the King, a foul contagion raised 

In all the host, and multitudes destroy'd. 

For the affront from Atreus' son received 

By his priest Chryses. To the fleet of Greece 

He came, with precious ransom to redeem 

His captive daughter, and Apollo's wreath 

And golden sceptre bearing in his hand. 

LEIF'S EXPEDITION FROM GREENLAND. 

They then fitted out their ship, and when they were ready, sailed seaward. 

They now found that country first which Bjarni had found last. There they stood 
in, cast anchor, and put out the boat, and went ashore, but could see no grass. Great 
glaciers covered the highlands, but it was as one flat rock from the sea to the glaciers. 
The country appeared to be utterly worthless. 

Then said Leif : " The same thing has not happened to us which did to Bjarni, — 
that we have not stepped ashore ; and now I shall give this country a name, and 
call it Helluland." 

They then went to the ship and put out to sea, and found another country. They 
again sailed to land, cast anchor, put out a boat, and walked ashore. That country was 
level and wooded, and white sands in many places where they went, and not steep 
along the sea. 

Then said Leif : " This country shall be named according to its qualities, — 
Maekland." 

Then going down again to the ship as quickly as possible, they sailed seaward, 
and for two days they sailed with a northeasterly wind until they sighted land. They 
sailed to the country, and came to an island which lay to the north of the mainland ; 
walked ashore, and looked about in fine weather. They noticed that dew was on the 
grass, and happening to touch it with their hands and put it into their mouths, 
thought they never had tasted anything so sweet as that. They then went to their 



DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 17 

ship, and sailed into that sound which lay between the island and the ness which 
jutted out north of the mainland, and steered westward past the ness. There, great 
shallows extended at ebb-tide, and then their ship stood aground, and then it ap- 
peared far from the vessel to the sea. But so eager were they to go ashore, that 
they could not wait until the sea should return to their ship, but leaped ashore 
where a river flowed out of a lake. But when the tide returned to their ship, then 
they took the boat and rowed to the ship, and it moved up into the river and then 
into the lake. There they cast anchor, and carried their leathern hammocks ashore 
and made booths there. They then decided to dwell there during the winter, and 
erected there a large building. . . . 

This is the story of Leif's voyage from Greenland to Vineland. 

Dr. Winsor and Professor Haynes substantially repeat the criticisms I 
have printed in my letter on the " Problem of the Northmen," — and to 
which I have replied, in the same publication. 

Dr. Winsor now omits the statement which I quoted from him last 
year, that the report of the Committee, by its Chairman, to the Massachu- 
setts Historical Society, on the discovery of America by the Northmen, 
'■^ fully expressed the sense of the Society ... in language which seems to 
be the result of the best historical criticism." 

But it does not seem to have occurred either to him or to the Chair- 
man to state that one member of the Committee, the then first Vice-Presi- 
dent of the Society, the late Dr. Charles Deane, did not acquiesce in the 
report, and declined to sign it, — a circumstance, I may add, of which that 
gentleman took occasion, after the report was printed, personally to inform 
me. It is obvious that the expressions chosen by the Corresponding Sec- 
retary of the Historical Society must have a technical rather than the com- 
monly accepted meaning, inasmuch as Dr. Deane has been generally recog- 
nized to be at the head of this department of research, in New England, 
and as such, entitled to personal recognition, when expressing dissent. 
It is, perhaps, due that I should mention that I had shown to Dr. Deane 
evidences of the presence here of the Northmen which it had not been my 
fortune to point out to my critics. 



18 defences of norumbega. 

Eev. Dk. Slaftee's Published Views. 

Rev. Dr. Slafter remarked, in the course of his public address before the 
Bostonian Society/ on which occasion I had the honor to be present : — 

" Did the Northmen leave on this continent any monuments or remains which may- 
serve as memorials of their abode here in the early part of the eleventh century ? 
Sources of evidence on this point must be looked for in the Sagas or in the remains 
which can be clearly traced to the Northmen. In the Sagas, we are compelled to 
say, as much as we might wish it otherwise, we have looked in vain for any such tes- 
timony. They contain no evidence or intimation that the Northmen constructed any 
masonry here, or laid one stone upon another. . . . There have been some historians 
who have found vastly more than 1 have been able to discover, but they belong to that 
class of historians who are distinguished by exuberance of imagination and redundance 
of thought:' 2 

In the communication presented to the public through the " Traveller," 
he says substantially as follows : — 

" Vineland, the bay, the river, the islands at the mouth, may mean almost any region, 
bay, river, with islands at the mouth, in New England. No evidence which is better than 
insufficient and trivial has been brought forward to positively locate them." 

Dr. Slafter is thus emphatic in the expression of his convictions because they 
are sincere, and based, as he felt, on adequate research. One may ask how could 

^ As supplied to the daily papers. 

' The critic may not have met with the following sentence in the address before the Royal Society 
by the late Sir Benjamin Brodie, and which Tyndal makes the text of one of his brilliant chapters, — 
" The Scientific Uses of the Imagination " : — 

" Physical Investigation, more than anything else besides, helps to teach us the actual value and right 
use of the imagination, — of that wondrous faculty which left to ramble uncontrolled leads us astray 
into a wilderness of perplexities and errors, a land of mists and shadows, but which properly controlled 
by experience and reflection becomes the noblest attribute of man, the source of poetic genius, the instru- 
ment of discovery in science, without the aid of which Newton would never have invented fluxions, nor 
Davy have decomposed the earths and alkalies, nor would Columbus have found another continent." 

It is a pleasure to recall the memory of this old friend and classmate of nearly fifl;y years ago. Sir 
Benjamin Brodie was the eldest son of the eminent surgeon of London. After his course under 
the great master Liebig, he devoted many years, as Professor of Chemistry at Oxford, to the suc- 
cessful development of numerous subtle laws of Chemistry, thus connecting his name imperishably 
with the progress of physical science. 



DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 19 

I have arrived at others so unlike them ? It can only be that from his mind had 
been concealed the evidence which brought conviction to mine. 

Let me crave indulgence for a word about myself. In the first place I have 
been fortunate. The accident of my residence on the tide-water of the Charles, 
and my leisure and opportunities, which permitted uninterrupted study of the prob- 
lem for six years, much of the time in the field, gave what could not hare come 
to me had I lived only so far away as Boston from the theatre of study. With 
this there was, I may perhaps add, the habit of testing problems by scientific 
methods, — to which naturally fell the problem of the Northmen ; and this came 
of a lifetime given to experimental research. 

Even with these fortuitous advantages, I am free to confess that but for a 
childhood among the Indians, as the son of a missionary, I should not have had 
what I regard as one of the chief qualifications for the study of this problem, — 
the habit of the ear readily to receive Indian utterances. This gave to the pho- 
netic qualities of their language their proper service in the study of the problem. 
The Northmen might have left traces of their language ; but for my exceptional 
experience, whatever else of qualification for the study I may have had, I should 
not in all probability have found Norway in Norumbega; or Nerigon, an earlier 
form of Norway, in Narragan-sett and Norridge-wock ; nor the Huitra-manna-land 
of the Sagas (White-man' s-land) in Wapanakke or Wampanakke,i — the home of 

* Wampanakke, Wampanauke, Wabanakki (Rasles); Wapanaehki (Cree),— White-man' s-land, — 
resolves itself into three Algonquin roots: wamp, an, and akke. 

For the first syllable Roger Williams sometimes gives wompi for "white" in the Narragan- 
sett dialect. In the Cree it is wap. In the Lenape of the Delaware it is woap. It appears in — 

Wampum, — "-white beads;" also in Wompan (R. G.), — "money" (beads strung on strings 
for convenience). We have the root in Wamp-aquit, — "a white blanket" (a covering), and in 
Wamp-inuit, — "white cloth." 

Dencke gives Woapach-poan, — " white bread." (Lenape.) 

Woapachsun = Woap-akke-assun, — " white-land-stone," " chalk." 

Woap-ak, — "white beach." 

It is recognized in the Mic-Mac, Massachusetts, Narragansett, and Chippewa, the Schawanese, 
Delaware (Minsi), Cheyenne, Cree, Sauk, and other Algonquin dialects. 

The second syllable an is an abbreviation from Leni, or Anini, Delaware for " man." It 
occurs in combination in the names of many Indian tribes. For Wahan, akke, and an, see the 
Algonquin Lenape Saga " Walum Olum," edited by Squier; also by Brinton. 

The third syUable,— 

Akke, means "land." The spelling varies, — as alike, auke, ackey, okke, etc. 



20 DEFENCES OF NORDMBEGA. 

the Wampanoags of the Puritan chroniclers (the tribe of King Philip), and the 
Wapenokis and Wapanoos of the Dutch. Nor should I hare found in Wabanakke 
(White-man's-land) the home of the Abenakis (Wabanakkes). It was in all this 
region that the explorers under Ayllon (1520), and later Verrazano (1524), found 
wMte people, of whom, farther north, Jacques Cartier heard in 1534-35, as also 
Zeisberger the Moravian missionary, and who were called Schawanaks. 

This early experience with the Indians has enabled me to recognize "Norum- 
bega" in Arambec (see John Rut, 1527, in Purchas), in the Grande Laurent-bee 
(Grouard's map, original parchment of Brevoort Collection, 1715), the Petit et 
Grande Lorembec (Vaugondy, 1749), and Laurens, on French maps in my pos- 
session, — all which are names successively borne by the same locality, beginning 
with Arambec, between the site of Louisburg, Cape Breton, and the Island of Sca- 
tari. This locality still bears on either side of the bay, for its headlands. Big 
and Little Loran, on some of the recent Admiralty charts of the Island of Cape 
Breton. The hec — the equivalent of hega, a " bay " — in Norumbega had been 
dropped, and the N and u of Norum had been replaced by the dialectic equivalents 
L and a. Norum — a promontory dividing a bay — in Norumbega, as serving in New 
England names, has, by dropping the hega (a bay), become a cape, as appears on 
numerous maps of the sixteenth and early part of the seventeenth centuries. The 
no was the na of Trumbull, and of Eliot's Bible, — & divide, the middle, — having 
the same root, not improbably, as the English nose. On one map there were two 
gulfs of St. Lorau, with a cape between (showing the confusion), looking out from 
the North Shore of the River of Canada. This name — Loran — not improbably 
became with Champlain C. St. Loran (1604-1612) ; with Lescarbot, C. Sainct 
Laurent (1609); then C. St. Laurens with Champlain (1632). Another and earlier 
English map (1610) gives for this point the Bay and Cape St. Lawrenc (the pho- 
netic French equivalent of Loran) ; and later, as Charlevoix says, gradually arose 
the name St. Lawrence, the name now applied to both the river and the gulf.^ 

The Naranbergue of Champlain (1612) on the Penobscot is preserved to-day 
in Nolumbehge (Father Vetromille), as it was preceded by the form of Baya 
de Loreme on the Sebastian Cabot map of 1544. What Vetromille heard — 
Nolumbehge — recalls, besides the name preserved by Champlain, that of Norom- 

' San Lorenzo was earlier (Gomara, 1553) ; and possibly St. Laurens may have been regarded 
for a time as a corruption of this form, instead of being in the line of derivatives from the first 
two syllables of Norum-bega. 



DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 21 

berghia ia the manuscript commission of Henry IV. to Marquis de la Roche, 
1598 (parchment rescript signed by Genin, 1606). 

The dialectic equivalence in the Algonquin of ?, n, and r was pointed out by 
Roger Williams as early as 1643. To these there seem properly to be added d 
and t. (See Earle's "Philology of the English Tongue," Oxford, 1873.) 

The habit of prefixing the sound of m or w to the utterance of h, — as in bih, 
"water," which became m'bih, and n'j}ih (its dialectic equivalent), — was recognized 
by Zeisberger, Heckewelder, Dencke, Duponceau, Gallatin, Brinton, and others, and 
is not peculiar to the Aborigines of New England or of America. The adequate 
illustration of its application came to me only with the collection of many early maps 
of the New England coast. It came to me, I may say, in this form, as the ful- 
filment of an expectation. In Nere'mbega, Noero-mbega, and Norombega, we have, 
as I had anticipated, the dialectic equivalents of Norumbega, Norb^ga, Norvega, Nor- 
veo-r, Noregr, which is Old Norse of the early Scandinavian literature for Norway .i 

"While without some acquaintance with Indian utterance it may be difficult to see 
how one could have recognized traces of the Norse in names still preserved in New 
England, nevertheless, Grotius, Forster, Ortelius, and Professor Beauvois have each 
suggested the possibility that Norumbega was in some way derived from Norvegia or 
Norway. 

The succession of the forms of the name of which the English is " Norway " 

1 The replacement of v with b is too familiar to require special illustration. The Cassava bread 
of Antigua of to-day was, earlier, Cassabi. Valboa was Balboa. The Cavo of the Portuguese was 
the Cabo of the Spaniard. Our silver is the German silber ; our cavalier is the Spanish caballero. 
Marvil Head and Marble Head were once interchangeable. On the maps of the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries one meets alternately Norvegia and Norbegia in great frequency. Besides 
the Norvega repeated on separate maps of Solis, and of Botero, 1603, Norvega occurs on Bernard 
Sylvan (Lelewel), 1511, and on Tabula Catalana (1375-1378, Lelewel). Wolgemud and Pleuden- 
wrufE (1493) have Norwega, — replacing the v with a to. The Zeni have Norvegia, 1380, and 
Norvegia is on Ruysch of 1507. Norvegia is on Ptolemy, of 1501-1504. Rafn, in the " Antiquitates 
Americans," translates the Norse name into Latin Norvegia. Larousse says " Norvege or Norwege." 

They are not remote derivatives from the ancient ^orse, — Noregr and Norvegr. Roman, 1730, 
has Norvegiar. Tlie present Norwegian name is Norge, which was also the name in the sixth 
century (see Wedell's Historical Atlas). Careful study, with a regard for philological and dialectic 
equivalents, will reveal in these early forms the source of all the various modes of spelling leading 
down to Norumbega. These so varied names, it is to be remembered, are not examples of Nor.^e 
spelling, -a claim mistakenly ascribed to me by some most learned writers, — but the results of 
efforts by other nationalities to express in letters the pronunciation as they heard or conceived it. 



22 



DEFENCES OP NORUMBEGA. 




SOLIS MAP OF THE REGION OF VINELAND AND THE COLONY OP NORYEGA AGAINST 
MASSACHUSETTS BAY, INCLUDING THE CITY OF NORUEGA (nORUMBEGA) IN THE 
FORTY-THIRD DEGREE. (fKOM THE COLLECTION OF MR. BREVOOKT.) 



DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 



23 




SOLIS MAP OF NORVEGA IN EUROPE (NORWAY), THE PARENT COUNTRY OF 
THE COLONY ON THE CHARLES RIVER. (FROM THE COLLECTION OF 
MR. BREVOORT ) 



24 DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 

(with its derivative Norumbega) is not difficult to trace in the New England 
names of to-day, — as in Naumbeak (Capt. John Smith), Naumkeag, and Amos- 
keag (see Colonel Gookin). Especially is this true when we take into account 
the Norumbega of Hakluyt, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Champlain, and of the maps 
of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. I have found a large number of 
early geographical names in New England which carry a Norse root.^ 

The familiar forms to-day of the ancient Norvega are, — 
Norge, the name on Norwegian maps. 
Norrige, the name on Swedish maps. 
Norvege, the name on French maps. 
Norwegen, the name on German maps. 
Norway, the name on English maps. 

Erom earlier and later maps — representing the time from the second century 
before Christ, down — I have not less than forty forms of the name. 

It will be a great, and I am sure a not unwelcome, surprise to my vener- 
able friend to find, as will presently appear, that his own labors have fur- 
nished evidence of the presence and the site of the very remains which he 
deems indispensable to a belief that the valley of the Charles held the 
early settlements of the Northmen, — " the stones laid one upon another." 

Let us now turn to — 

The City and Country of Norumbega, 

as the theatre of the evidence which Dr. Slafter deems essential to conviction. 

The city was uniformly placed on the maps, down to Champlain, in 
the country called Nova Francia, — the earliest New France. 

There seems to have been an early chart designed to illustrate the 
site of the country described in the Vineland Sagas, — a chart which was 
repeatedly copied. At the same point on three of the copies, — that of 
Ortelius in 1570, of Solis in 1598, and Botero in 1603, — we have the 

1 Among forms constantly recurring are such as the following: No, na, noe, nau, nolle, nollum, 
norri, norum, bega, beck, baug, sak, sac, sag, vik, ak, an, og, hondo, lor, arem, husa, chic, yar, chili, gothe. 
With these are many dialectic modifications ; but I may not pursue the matter here. 



DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 25 

same name with dialectic variations. (See last three of the maps on one 
sheet, page 32.) 

Ortelius has Norumbega where Solis has Noruega, and Botero Norvega. 
They apply to the same locality. These three names are plainly all forms 
of Norway, — u, v, w, and b being interchangeable. Solis's map has the 
name with the character standing for a city, and also in larger print the 
same name for a province, and in still larger print the name Nova 
Francia, — which also appears on both the others. 

When the natives, on all the coast from Cape Cod to the St. Law- 
rence, were asked the name of their country or province or people, 
they answered, '■'■Normlega" which became '^ Nonnnhega" to the inquirer; 
and as the vowels changed, the word took on other forms of spelling, 
according to the nationalities of the questioners. Peter Martyr wrote 
Arenibi; Verrazano, Anorobagra; Ruscelli, Niirumberg ;^ Mercator, Norombega; 
AUefonsce, Norombergue ; William de Teste, Anoragua, — but they were all 
in Neiv France. With the maps of Solis, Ortelius, and Botero, taken in 
connection with Bancroft's remark that " the French diplomatists always 
remembered that Boston was within the original limits of New France,"^ 
I have elsewhere intimated that the elements for the solution of the 
Problem of the Northmen, as presented in the Sagas, might be found. 

Extent of the Countet. 

If we take the name as used by Champlain, we have the country 
stretching over a vast area. Charlevoix, another authority as absolute 
as Champlain, speaks of Pentagoet (the Penobscot) as running through the 
midst of Norumbega, " long known" he says, " as a beautiful and powerful 
Province." AUefonsce, less known than Champlain for obvious reasons, 

1 This resemblance to Nuremhurg is not without signification. It seems not improbable, from 
researches I have made, that the ancient Bavarian town gave the name to Noricum of Roman times, 
conceived to be the district from which Austria arose, and was itself traceable through various dialectic 
changes to Noreja of the second century before Christ (see Wedell's Atlas), — so nearly resembling 
the Noreijr of the time of Leif, and not remote from the Nerigon of Pliny a thousand years earlier. 

2 History of the United States, 2d ed., vol. i. p. 24. 



26 DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 

but as a pilot enjoying the highest reputation, finds abundant evidence of 
the extension of Norumbega in southern New England. Thevet found the 
country in the forty-third degree. John Smith looked for it for many 
years unsuccessfully, in Virginia. Ramusio's and Parmentier's descriptions 
of the productions of Norumbega included fruits that are foimd in the 
Carolinas and Florida. Allefonsce seemed to have had a suspicion that 
this ancient country reached to and included the same region, and he 
looked for it about the latitude of Charleston. In the other direction, 
the dialectic equivalent of the name is still preserved on the recent Ad- 
miralty charts, as already mentioned, on the south side of the island of 
Cape Breton, between the ancient Louisburg and the island of Scatari. 
It applied also in Champlain's time to the present Cape North. 

This great extent of country was called Norumbega. Admiral De 
Monts, says the record (Slafter's " Champlain "), sailed southward from the 
region of Frenchman's Bay along the coast of Norumbega. Champlain 
left the name on his maps — 1612-1613 — at different points, and in his 
text it is found altogether some forty times. He heard the name far in 
the interior as well as along the New England coast. 

On page 218 of the second volume (Prince Society's Publications, 
edited by Dr. Slafter), Champlain has recorded his testimony as to the 
extent of the country of Norumbega as follows. 

While on the lake which bears his name, Champlain was told by the 
Algonquins — whose cause he had espoused — of their enemies inhabiting 
the region beyond a lake (Lake George), to reach which it was neces- 
sary to pass a fall, which he afterwards visited, "which lake was nine 
or ten leagues long. Afterward, reaching the end of the lake, we should 
have to go," they said, "two leagues by land, and then pass through a 
river flowing into the sea, on the coast of Norumbega, near that of 
Florida,^ whither it took them only two days to go by canoe, as I 

1 This may have been the Florida of Verrazano, — the region of Cape Cod ; or possibly Cham- 
plain might have given greater extent to Norumbega, or to Florida, as was given by Allefonsce, 
Ramusio, and others. 



DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 27 

have since ascertained from some prisoners we captured, who gave 
me minute information in regard to all they had personal knowledge 
of, through some Algonquin interpreters who understood the Iroquois 
language." 

It is quite obvious that Champlain, in common with the learned 
men of the sixteenth century generally, believed in the existence of 
Norumbega as a country. That he has unwittingly crowned the demon- 
stration that there was a city of Norumbega as well, we shall see later. 
That he should have stricken every trace of the name from his map 
of 1632, we shall also see was in keeping with his having failed to 
find remains of the city on the Penobscot, and of his having implicitly 
accepted the superficial reports of the Charles, and of its mistaken du- 
plicate Eio du Gas, made by the men sent to explore the region, — if, 
indeed, he himself were not personally of the exploring party. (See 
Purchas, 1613, cited further on.) 

Dk. Parkman. 

Of my critical friends who doubt the presence of Norsemen and 
of Norumbega — city or country — in the neighborhood of the Charles, 
and think it only probable that the Norsemen came to America at all, 
Dr. Francis Parkman has given the following reasons why he does not 
accept my general conclusions. He says : — 

" I think it is probable that the Norsemen came to America, hut I do not 
consider the evidence to that effect which has been brought forward sufficient for 
proof. The most definite statement ever [.?] made about Norumbega was the report 
of Champlain, who supposed that if Norumbega existed at all, it must have been 
up the Penobscot, not far from the site of Bangor. Champlain's maps of the 
eastern coast were the first really accurate ones that were made. Thevet was 
credulous, addicted to exaggeration, and was fond of relating marvellous things. The 
statements of Ingram are of a vague and uncertain character; his story is a 
doubtful one. Little is known of Allefon^ce." ^ 

* I had cited as authorities Allefonsce, Thevet, and Ingram. 



28 DEFENCES OF NOKUMBEGA. 

It is true, nevertheless, as will appear, that these authorities are of 
significance. It will be later seen that they are not indispensable. 
Ingram was here in 1569; Thevet in 1556; Allefonsce in 1542. 

The Sailoe, David Ingram. 

David Ingram was a sailor. He was set ashore by Sir John Hawkins, 
with more than a hundred others, in stress for want of provisions, at 
Tampico on the Gulf of Mexico, 1568, and wandered all the way across 
the country, seeing and hearing of many marvellous things by the way, — 
coming at length in 1569 to Norumbega, which he says was sixty leagues 
{miles probably intended) from Cape Breton (Cape Ann). Here he found 
a city three quarters of a mile long. From this city, soon after his 
arrival, he went to the Bay of St. Mary's (one of the early names 
of Boston Harbor), where he found a French ship, in which he sailed 
for France, and ultimately reached England. It is recorded of him that 
he again met and was recognized and kindly received by Sir John 
Hawkins, and that he was called in council, as Thevet was, by Dr. John 
Dee, to advise in the interest of the ill-fated Sir Humphrey Gilbert about 
an expedition to Norumbega. Though illiterate, and to some extent cred- 
ulous, Ingram seems to have commanded the confidence of those who 
met and conversed with him after his return to England. That his state- 
ments about Norumbega on the Charles were truthful, will, later in this 
paper, be accepted by the unprejudiced reader without hesitation. 

Andrew Thevet. 

Andrew Thevet was an early explorer and discoverer. In his time 
the New "World was filled with marvels to the men of enterprise in the 
old. He wrote much, and, like many discoverers of his time, incorporated 
in his writings, with his own relations, those of what others had seen or 
reported that they had seen. He acknowledges it frankly. His observa- 
tion of a comet (one of the marvels, which he calls a star with a tail), 
with the date and position, I have tested by appeal to the records of 



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DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA, 29 

astronomy, through the astronomers at the Observatories of Harvard and 
Cordoba. He was many days in a vast and thick field of marine vege- 
tation that obstructed the progress of his ship (another marvel, for he 
had not heard of the Sargasso Sea) ; when he had crossed it, he sailed 
away to Cabo de Baxos.^ It is certain that no early writer has given 
such accurate accounts of the region from Narragansett Bay to, and 
including, Cape Ann. Professor Ganong, than whom on this question of 
trustworthiness no one is more competent from research in this field to 
give opinion, says Thevet is " certainly truthful." He is charged with 
being credulous. So was Pliny; but what a magnificent defence of his 
great accomplishments and services Cuvier has left us ! Shall I take 
exception to the estimate of Champlain because his map of the coast of 
New England, instead of being, as is claimed, the first really accurate one, 
is grotesque in its duplication and misplacement of points, and because 
it fails to recognize some of the most important features of the coast 
along which he sailed at least four times, and because there is a want of 
conformity between his text and his maps? Instead of depreciating his 
work, I marvel at his having made so excellent and generally accurate a 
map. His finding two Chouacocts (Cohassets), — they were only descriptive 
names applicable alike to two localities, — was what led to most of his 
errors. That he has twice given (map of 1612) the site of Norumbega, 
on two presentations of the Charles, is evidence that two exploring parties 
were sent out, — or perhaps only that two reports were received. 

In Dr. Parkman's estimate of the trustworthiness of Thevet as apphed 
to what he has said of Norumbega he has the support of many distin- 
guished men; among them are Professor Shaler, the late Mr. George 
Dexter, Rev. Dr. De Costa, Jean de Lery, the late Mr. Brevoort, Pro- 

1 Cabo de Baxos, the cape of the very little bay of Provincetown Harbor, is Algonquin. Bacca-es-es 
(Baxos) is one of the recesses of the bay of Cape Cod; Bacca-es (Baxe) is the lesser bay — Cape Cod 
Bay — as compared with the greater Massachusetts Bay. Es is the Algonquin diminutive ; es-es is 
a form of emphasis. The x arose as in Pau-tuck-es-et = Pautuxet (Trumbull). Bacca-es = Baxe. 
Bacca-es-es = Bases = Baxos. 



30 DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 

fessor Gaffarrel, and others.^ My critical friends simply did not have the 
necessary material for adequate investigation. 

1 have intimated that Thevet did not stand alone in maintaining that 
Noriimbega was in the forty-third degree, against the opinion held by 
some in his time that Norumbega was in the latitude of Canada in some 
fifty-six degrees. He mentions certain well-known points on the coast of 
Norumbega. They are between the Cape Sainct Jean (Double) of Thevet, 
our Cape Ann, and — as he calls it — Aiayascon (Iroquois for arm), our 
Nantasket (or Nam-iasM), which has the shape of a bent human arm ; and 
Thevet gives the exact latitude of Nantasket Roads, observed and recorded 
by himself, as 42° 14'. Of some of these points he gives the names. They 
are Porto de Refugio, Paradiso, and Flora. Some cartographers add Porto 
Reale. Ogilby and Buno's Cluverius both mention them as on the coast 
of Norumbega, but they have not left us maps. I introduce other 
authorities in a series of maps, which besides Thevet' s, prepared from 
his Relation in the Cosmography (edition of 1575), includes Ruscelli (two 
phases), Gastaldi (from Ramusio), Ulpius's Globe, Hieronymus Verrazano, 
and MaioUo. The support they lend to Professor Ganong's statement 
that " Thevet was certainly truthful" is obvious. 

Of his explorations from Cap Juuide (Point Judy of modern times), 
around Baccalaos (the Cabeljau^ of the Dutch) to Cape Ann, which he 
calls Cape Sainct Jean (the Cape Johann of Lok, and the Cape Jehan of 

J In the Preface to the Singularitez de la France Antarctique Professor Gaffarrel has given a 
thoughtful estimate of Thevet's character, as well as a summary of the criticisms by his euemies, 
and by those who could not accept as true what he said of many of the wonders of the New 
World. In the summary Professor Gaffarrel points out the imperfect early education of Thevet, 
his passion for learning, his foibles, his vanity ; but it all fails entirely to afiect the accuracy of 
his geographical portrait of the coast from Point Judy, the western promontory at the mouth of 
Narragansett Bay, around Cape Cod, past Cohasset into Boston Harbor, and up the Charles as 
high as the mouth of Stony Brook; and northeastward along the Beverly shore and around Cape 
Ann, with its two salients. This portrait I have tested. It is absolutely beyond the reach of 
any one's adverse criticism on the point of truthfulness. Consider only the latitude of Nantas- 
ket Roads! 

2 Baccaloo = Baocalieu ; by metathesis, Cabeljau (Dutch) or Kabeljau (German). 




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DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 31 

AUefonsce and many others, as will be seen), Thevet has given a most 
detailed account. The latitude of the entrance to the Charles was ob- 
served with wonderful precision, and recorded in his " Cosmography." 
The more crucial test of his record of what Avas in the forty-second 
and forty-third degrees will be seen on comparing it with that of 
the foregoing sheets of charts of photographic fac-similes, which I have 
prepared. 

There is another consideration, — Thevet is not a new witness. He 
has been proved. He said ^ that on a river called Norumbegue (also Rio 
Grande), in the forty-third degree, at a distance of some ten or twelve 
leagues from its mouth, there was a fort, surrounded by a ditch supplied 
with water from a stream entering the river at this point. I went to the 
place described, and found, six years ago, the remains of the ancient 
fort and ditch. I also found the arm-shaped Nantasket, with its Iroquois 
name Aiayascon, and the Cape of the Islands, — Cohasset, — as described 
by him, and familiar to us all; and more recently I discovered the city 
as indicated in Thevet's text and on his map. It was Thevet who gave, 
as already mentioned, the latitude of the mouth of the river Norum- 
begue (Nantasket Roads) substantially coincident with that of the Coast 
Survey, — 42° 18'. 

Jean Allefonsce. 

Jean Allefonsce had sailed for many years in almost every ocean, and 
was renowned as a most skilful pilot. He was a reserved, profoundly 
conscientious man ; gave in his writings instructions for the use of astrono- 
mical instruments; was chosen by the King of France to be the pilot of 
Roberval, who led an exploring expedition to our coast in 1542, and 
superseded the wise, patient, and gallant Jacques Cartier,^ — the great 

I See John Cabot's " Landfall," 1497, and the " Site of Norumbega," 1885. Cosmographie, 1575. 

* See Margi-y, at length. Dr. Kohl says : "Roberval, sent on a voyage of discovery to north- 
eastern America by the French Government," Francis I. " sent also one of his mariners, a very 
expert pilot, named Alphonse de Saintonge, to search for a northwest passage north of Newfound- 



32 DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 

captain, who much as he added of discovery along the Saint Lawrence, 
had failed to accomplish one of the chief objects of his expeditions, to 
find the passage through to the Indies. It was while seeking this passage 
under Eoberval, that Allefonsce found his vessel of too deep draught to 
ascend the Gulf of Barnstable at the bottom of Cape Cod Bay, in the 
forty-second degree,^ which bay he conjectured might lead through to 
the Western Ocean ; and it was to the pursuit of this phantom, — bom 
of Columbus, and the passion of the century and a half following, — that 
we owe AUefonsce's record of the Massachusetts coast. He placed the 
river and the city of Norumbegue, as his record shows, between 42° 6' and 
42° 38/ — within a breadth of only tUrtydwo minictes of a degree. 



"Was there a City of Norumbega? 

Before further proceeding to vindicate the authorities discredited by 
Dr. Parkman, let us pause to glance for a moment at one branch of the 
evidence of the existence of a city of Norumbega which is furnished in 
the ancient cartography of the New England coast. Here (p. 32) are 
maps from Peter Martyr (resting on the pilot Miruelo, 1520) down to the 
maps at the end of the sixteenth century, which connect Norumbega with 
a 'province of Norway, with the region of Vineland, with the sovereignty of France, 
with the neighborhood of Boston ! Many of these maps bear against the name 
a special mark indicating the site of the city of Norumbega. 

land. Jean Alphonse de Saintonge was a very distinguished French captain, who formerly had 
travelled to Brazil, in French as well as Portuguese sailing-vessels. Hakluyt [vol. iii. p. 237 seg.] 
communicates excellent sailing directions for the Gulf and River St. Lawrence, made by this navi- 
gator [Alphonse de Saintonge]." Eohl further refers to Alphonse thus: "See more of him in a 
note of M. D'Avezac, in Bulletin de la Societe de Geographie, p. 317 seq., Annee 1857." 

Margry, in " Navigationes Fran9aises," drew attention to the passage (also given by Hakluyt) 
in which he distinctly avers that he had entered a bay in lat. 42°. (Brevoort's Verrazano, p. 154.) 
This was the Bay at Barnstable, which Alphonse suggested should be explored with a smaller vessel, 
as leading possibly through to the Pacific, — a northwest passage. 

* My attention was first drawn to this point by the late J. Carson Brevoort. 



aa^ja^ ^';^?^ 



DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 33 

List op Maps 
showing the site of Norumbega and its concomitant geographical features and their 
succession, in answer to the question, — 

Was there a City of Nokumbega in the Forty-thikd Degree? 

Arembi of Peter Martyr, — Arambe of Meruilo, 1520. 

Noruberga — ascribed to Mercator — has the character indicating a city. 

Norombega (Wytfliet) , — city. 

Anorabagra, Dauphin map (Desceliers), 1546, — archipelago, river, and turreted gate- 
way, which with the name Anorobagra point to the city. 

Norombergue, Allefonsce, 1543, —river and (by relation) city, in forty-third degree. 

Norombega, Mercator (Jomard, 1569), — fort and city. 

Norumbega, Thevet (from relation in Cosmography), 1575, — fort and city. Nan- 
tasket Koads in latitude 42° 14', observed by Thevet. 

Norimbega, Thevet Cosmography (1575, an obviously imperfect copy of Mercator, 
1569), — fort and city. 

Norombega, Lok, 1582. No cipher, but name against the locality. 

Norombega, John Dee, 1580, — fort, river Gamas (Gomez). 

Norambega, Judaeis, — river called E. Grande, or Gamas. At entrance to bay is 
C. de St. Maria (1593). 

Norombega, Plancie, 1594, — city and Province in Nova Prancia. 

Norumbega, Molyneaux Globe, 1592, — site of city on Eio Grande in Nova Francia. 

Norombega, De Bry, 1596, — fort in Nova Prancia at junction of two streams. 

Norumbega, Wytfliet, 1597, — fort on Eio Grande and province of Norumbega in 
Novae Pranciae Pars, with Cape de las Islas, at mouth of river. 

I have numerous other maps pointing to the site of the city, under various modifica- 
tions of the name. 

Noruega, Solis, 1598, — city in Noeua Prancia, with Norvega and Suedia on the 
European portion of the map. (See map, page 23.) 

This map and the three following couple the Norumbega of Nova Prancia (New 
Prance) with the Norway of Europe. The three later are obvious copies of a common 
original based on the Saga story of the early Norse voyages and the recognition of the 
locality of Vineland. 

Norumbega, Ortelius, 1570, — site of city in Nova Prancia. 

Noruega, Solis, 1598, — city on the Eio Grande, in the province of Norvega, suboi- 
dinate to the Nova Prancia of Verrazano, — " a river flowing from the land through a 
lake to the sea." (Vineland Sagas.) 

Norvega, Botero, 1603, — site of city in Nova Prancia. 

On all the last preceding five maps the city of Norumbega is against the Island 
Claudia. 



34 DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 

Sometimes we have both the name and the mark, or cipher, indicating 
a city. The cipher is sometimes omitted. In Thevet (1556) and Mercator 
(1569) the name Norumbega is at the junction of two streams, where I 
found the fort, and also lower down the river, with the device of the city 
at the latter point only. On Wytfliet the city is placed at the junction of 
the two streams. In some cases the name of Norumbega as a country is 
given. In a few cases it is marked as a river as well as a city. In 
most cases the name refers to a city on the left bank of a river, called 
Kio Grande as well as Norumbega. At the bottom of the sheet is the 
map of Solis (1598) and the copies of the same original by Ortelius and 
Botero, which connect Vineland with New France and the Charles. A 
second sheet of maps to be later presented will carry forward the evi- 
dences of an ancient city of Norumbega at Watertown, down to the date 
of its recent discovery. 

Lescarbot, 1610 ; Douay, 1607 ; and Wytfliet (Augmentum Ptolo- 
macsei), 1597, — all alike carry the statement that "^o the north of Virginia 
is Norumbega, lohich is well known as a beautiful diy and a great river" which 
in most particulars had before in substance been related by Allefonsce, 
Thevet, and Ingram. 

The Earliest Norumbega on this Series of Maps. 

Among the provinces over -wliich Ayllon was made Adelantado (governor), with a 
charter contemplating possessions extending eight hundred leagues northward, and with 
which the pilot Miruelo had become acquainted on an expedition of discovery north- 
ward from the Bahamas in 1520, was Arambe. The name on the map of Peter Mar- 
tyr, annotated by Hakluyt (1537), is Arembi. It is given to a locality represented on 
the copy of Peter Martyr's map of 1534, m the Lenox Library. It is on the Rio Gamas, 
— Steva gomes (Gomez). i Eio Gamas is one of the names of the Charles. Terra de 
Ayllon — mainly the territory of New England — is shown on Eibero's map (1529). It 
lies to the north of Cape Cod, and holds Arembi. Associated with this name in the 
list of provinces or regions or localities over which Ayllon was to rule were many other 

1 It seems not impossible that the coast of New England was visited by Agramonte, commissioned 
by Ferdinand and Queen Juana of Castile under the guidance of Breton pilots, as early as 1511. 
But the record, if one was made, has not been identified. See Brevoort's Verrazano, p. 69. 



DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 



35 



names, some of which seem but dialectic modifications of Indian names still preserved on 
the New England coast. Peter Martyr conceived this region to join to Baeealaos, which at 
the date of his writing, as shown on Eibero's map, lay between New France and Labrador 
(then Nova Scotia). See Peter Martyr's " Decades," VII. chap, ii., and Navarette's " Collec- 
tion of Voyages and Discoveries," Vol. III. p. 69-74 ; also Herrera's " Decades," Book viii. 
I add a full list, italicizing the names which I believe to be still preserved : — 
Sauche, Chicora, Xapira, Tatancal, Anicatiye, Cocayo, Guaeayo, Xoxi, Sona, Basque, 
Arambe, Xamunambe, Huag, Tanzaca, Yenyohol, Paor, Tammiscaron, Carixaquisignanin, 
and Anexa. Besides these there are mentioned Duhare, "on the opposite side of a 
bay from Chicora," and Guadalpe, Xapeda, Hitha,Xamunambe, Tihe, Guacaia, Quohathe, 
Tanzacca, and Pahor. 

I add also a list of certain of the Spanish names with what seem to me to be 
corresponding Indian names. The differences between these and the equivalent Spanish 
are not greater than between the names given to the same locality in the dialects of 
neighboring tribes. For example : — 



Spanish. 


Algonquin. 




Sauche 


Saco 


Maine 


Chicora 


Chicorua 


Maine 


Anicatiye 


Natiscotec, 






Now called Anticosti 


Gulf of St. Lawrence. 


Pasqui 


Pasque 


Mouth of Buzzard's Bay. 


Arambe 


Norumbega, on the E. 
Gamas (Gomez), the 






Charles 


Massachusetts. 



Xamunambe 

Some compound, of which 
Arambe — that is, Norum- 
bega — formed a part. 
Huag Quoag 

Duhare Du Haute (?) 



Quohathe 



Cohasset 



Long Island [N. Y.] South Shore. 
See John Smith's map off the 

mouth of the Penobscot. 
Massachusetts Bay. 



Without now going into detail, one may ask, Were these map-makers 
and historiographers, representing different and sometimes rival nationalities, 
united for seventy years in a conspiracy to impose on their sovereigns, the 
world of geography, and themselves ? Is such a conspiracy conceivable ? 



36 DEFENCES OF NOKUMBEGA. 

If there could not have been such a conspiracy, there must have been a 
city of Norumbega. It will be seen that it could only have been on 
the Charles. 

The Signification" op the Latitudes. 

Dr. Parkman discredits AUefonsce and Thevet, but credits Champlain 
with having made the first correct map of the New England coast. 

Let us see how much this involves. These three navigators — Alle- 
fonsce, Thevet, and Champlain — alike place the shores of a great bay in 
the forty-third degree, where the Coast Survey places Massachusetts Bay ; 
that is, they place Cape Ann and Cape Cod and the region between, 
which includes the mouth of Charles River, — all three, — in the forty-third 
degree. 

Let us carefully consider these three points. The 42d degree reaches 
to within a few minutes of the summit of the peninsula of Cape Cod. 
Cape Ann, the more northern salient of the bay, is in 42° 38'. The 
mouth of Charles River at Nantasket is, according to Thevet, in 42° 14' +. 
Boston, according to the Coast Survey, is in 42° 21.'* See how narrow the 
belt is, what is in it, and what authorities are united on its latitude ! 

Within the compass of less than forty miles in the forty-third degree 
are the three points, — Cape Ann, the mouth of Charles River, and Cape 
Cod, — in which the Coast Survey, Champlain, Thevet, and Allefonsce all 
are agreed ! 

Within the same limits of latitude,^ I hold, was the ancient city of 
Norumbega. The proofs are manifold, but let us take a single one, 
resting primarily on Allefonsce. 

1 Strictly speaking, the State House is in 42° 21' 27". 6. 

2 Purchas (1613) places Norumbega between the Kennebec and Cape Cod; Ogilby (1671) places 
it in the region of the forty-third degree. Nantasket and Cohasset are on the maps of Winthrop, 
Champlain, Lescarhot, and the Coast Survey. Under other names the same points are indicated on 
many other maps. 



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defences of norumbega. 37 

Identity of Cape Ann with the southern Cape Breton op 
Allefonsce in the Forty-third Degree. 

Aside from the irresistible logic of the latitude of the mouth of the 
Charles, observed and recorded by Thevet, it has already been hinted ' 
that the arch upon which confident conviction may rest contains, for one 
of its elements, AUefonsce's identification of Cape Ann with a certain 
ancient cape called Cape Breton. Allefonsce was the first to make 
absolutely clear that there were two Cape Bretons, somewhat less than 
eighty leagues apart, one of which was in the forty-third degree, and 
is no longer known by that name, but as Cape Ann. The other Cape 
Breton was the one with which we are all familiar as the island in forty- 
five to forty-eight degrees, separated from Newfoundland by a considerable 
strait leading from the Atlantic into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, — now 
called Cabot Straits on the Admiralty Chart, following the suggestion 
of Mr. Brevoort, — and from the continent, by the Gut of Canso. 

In AUefonsce's time there was what was called the Sea of Canada (Mer 
du Canada), which included the waters west of Newfoundland ; and 
there was another and greater sea to the south and east, called la Mer 
Oceane. This is so stated in AUefonsce's manuscripts, obtained from the 
archives of the Bibliotheque Nationale, of which I have before me a photo- 
graphic absolute fac-simile. He thus presents in the French of his time 
the great fact of the two Cape Bretons. Allefonsce says : — 

" Retournant au Cap de Ratz, qui est en la Mer Oceane . . . je ditz que ce Cap Ratz 
et le Cap de Breton et phis de ports en la Mer Oceane, qui est une isle appell^ aussi 
S. Jehan, sur I'est-nord-est et ouest-sud-ouest. [sic] II y a en la route quatre vingt 
lieues. Le diet Cap Breton de la Mer Oceane est par quarente deux degres haulteur 
de polle Artique." 

This passage is preceded by the mention of the Isle Oiseaux, Isle Brion, 
and St. Miguel, as in the Mer du Canada, in latitude about 46°-48°. 

' See my communication on the "Discovery of the Ancient City of Norumbega." 



38 DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 

Many of these places still bear the names they bore in the middle of 
the sixteenth century. The St. John of that time and latitude, however, 
became Prince Edward's Island. One side of the island of Cape Breton 
faces the Gulf of St. Lawrence (the Mer du Canada) ; the other side looks 
out on the Mer Oceane.^ 

In the sea of Canada is the island of St. John, on Sebastian Cabot's 
map. In the same sea was another Cape Ratz (our Cape Eaye, on the 
west coast of Newfoundland, across the Cabot Straits of the recent Admi- 
ralty charts and northeast of Cape North, the earlier Cape Lorain). Be- 
sides this was the other Cape Eaye (also called Cape Ratz by AUefonsce) 
at the southeastern extremity of Newfoundland (our Cape Race), which 
was in the Mer Oceane. Besides this island of St. John, in the Gulf 
of St. Lawrence, there was that in the forty-third degree referred to by 
AUefonsce.^ 

There are two inscriptions referring to the Landfall of John Cabot 
in 1497, on the map of 1544, — ^' Prima visa," and '^ Prima terra visa." 

In my paper on the Landfall of John Cabot, 1885, I suggested that 
the land first seen might have been Mt. Agamenticus, somewhat inland 
and to the northwest of Cape Ann. A friend — Rev. Dr. Thomas Hill, 
formerly President of Harvard University — has calculated the horizon 
from the summit of the mountain, with its known height and latitude? 

1 On some of my maps the Mer du Canada embraces Newfoundland, and extends to the south- 
ward even beyond the latitude of Cape Sable 

" This little island, St. John, is referred to in the following paragraph from Hakluyt. One of the 
legends on the Cabot map (" Adams" copy) of 1884, as translated by Hakluyt and cited by the late 
Dr. Charles Deane (Winsor, vol. iii. p. 45) reads : — 

" In the year of our Lord 1494, John Cabot, a Venetian, and his son Sebastian (with an English 
fleet sent out from Bristol), discovered that land which no man before that had attempted, on the 24th 
of June, about five o'clock of the early morning. This land he called Prima Vista, — that is to say, 
First Seen, — because, as I suppose, it was that part whereof they had the first sight from the sea. 
That island which lyeth out before the land he called the island of St. John, upon this occasion, 
as I think, because it was discovered upon the day of St. John the Baptist." 

Dr. Deane remarks that the passage in parentheses is not in the original, but was introduced by 
Hakluyt. 



DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 39 

and finds that it might have been seen earlier than Cape Ann, from a 
vessel coming in from sea. The island of St. John of the forty-third 
degree must, then, have later come into view. It was the island east of the 
Annisquam River, — the canal St. Julian (Johan) of Gomez, — outside of 
which island of St. John are the Three Turks' Heads of John Smith (the 
small islands near the shore of St. John's), — Strait's Mouth, Thatcher's, 
and Milk islands. See Bollero's map, 1554, having Canal. S. Juan.^ 

The St. John of Sebastian Cabot's m;ip of 1544 seems to have been 
recognized by AUefonsce as a name applied to an island in the southwest- 
ern part of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The island of St. John, of John 
Cabot, — his Landfall on his birthday, June 24, 1497, — was separated from 
the mainland by the Annisquam River, which was the original Gut of 
Canso, as I pointed out in 1885, in my " Landfall of Cabot." The cluster 
of islands north on Sebastian Cabot's map (1544), on the Dauphin 
(Desceliers, 1546), Gastaldi, Ruscelli, Solis, Merriam, and a crowd of other 
maps, are the islands of the Maim coast, south of Frenchman s Bay. The 
Penobscot is confounded ivith the St. Laurence. But it is impossible to stop 
here to consider the matter of the confusion between the two new-found- 
lands, which I have discussed at length in connection with the map of 
Sebastian Cabot, in a paper nearly ready for the press. These hints are, 
however, sufiicient to enable the student to clear away the mists with 
which the subject has been enveloped. 

The name St. John, though applied first and limited to the island east 
of the Annisquam River and Bay, includes on some maps the mainland for 
a considerable distance, — as we see on Cosa, Gastaldi, and Ruscelli. It was 
the prevailing notion down to the time of AUefonsce, — indeed, down to 
that of Ramusio, — that the whole region was made up of islands. Ver- 
razano's maps have only recently been brought to light. Ribero's map, 
1529, also seems not to have been seen either by AUefonsce or Ramusio. 



1 This channel is indicated on the map of Capt. Cyprian Southack, from surveys made before 
1694. (Photographed for me by the United States Coast Survey Office.) 



40 defences of norumbega. 

What Allefonsce said. 

The passage already cited from Allefonsce may be translated thus : — 

" Beiurning to Cape Matz, which is on the open sea [our Cape Race at the southeast 
corner of Newfoundland], I say that the Cape Matz [on the one hand] and the Cape 
of Breton and other ports in the open sea, which is also called Jehan [on the other] , 
along the east-northeast and west-southwest [are] on the course eighty leagues.^ The 
said Cape Breton of the open sea^ [our Cape Ann] is through [that is, next to and 
above] forty-two degrees of north latitude." 

Later occurs the following : — 

" Turning to the island of St. Jehan, which is called the Cape de Breton [Cape Ann], 
and the many ports in the Mer Oceane, which is above thirty-nine degrees of the height 
of the North Pole [the region from the Delaware to Cape Cod], I say that the Cape 
Sainct Jehan, called Cape de Breton and the Cap de la Franciscane are northeast and 
southwest, and trending a quarter from east to tvest, there are on the route a hundred 
and forty leagues, and there make a Cape called Cape de JSforomhegue." 

The Cape de la Franciscane is on AUefonsce's pen-made chart at 
the summit of Cape Cod ; the Cape Norombegue in his text seems to be 
applied to the whole peninsula of Cape Cod and Long Island, and ex- 
tends, perhaps, to the entrance to Delaware Bay. 

Allefonsce continues : — 

" The said Cape is in about forty-one degrees of latitude.^ The coast is through- 
out sandy and low, with no mountains, and along the coast there are many islands 
of sand, and a coast dangerous from banks and rocks [from Barnegat to Cohasset 
rocks]. . . . Beyond [that is, to the north of] the Cap de Norombegue [called on 
his map, at the summit of the Cape, Cap de la Franciscane] descends the river 
called Norombegue, about twenty-five leagues from the Cape. The said river is 
large; it is in more than [that is, in higher latitude, than] forty degrees of lati- 
tude, and maintains its largeness some thirty or forty leagues, and is salt [Alle- 

• It is mentioned that the leagues were French leagues, about 2.42 English miles. 

^ From the quotation it appears that Allefonsce conceived the country of Norombegue to ex- 
tend even farther than Delaware Bay. The language is somewhat confused, and seems to indi- 
cate possible extension as far at least as Charleston, South Carolina. 



DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 41 

fonsce says he was so told, — selon le diet des gens de la ville'] , and is all full of 
Isles, which extend some ten or twelve leagues into the sea^ [the Brewsters, the 
Graves, the Roaring Bull, the Lizard, etc.], and it is dangerous from rocks and 
swashings. . . . The said river is beyond forty-one degrees of latitude. Within 
the said river fifteen leagues there is a city which is called Norombegue, and there 
is in it a fine people, and they have quantities of skins of all animals. The people 
wear cloaks of marten skins. . . . The laud of Norombegue is high and good." 

Allefonsce makes the coast southvv^arcl from Cape de la Franciscane 
(Cap Norombegue, — the Peninsula of Cape Cod) including Long Island 
and the Jersey coast to Delaware Bay, low and sandy. He makes the 
entrance to the river Norombegue (between Nahant and Cohasset) full 
of islands and rocks, and for these reasons, with its tides, currents, and 
the winds, difficult of navigation. 

Allefonsce' s description makes identification easy to one familiar with 
maps of the Coast Survey of the region from 39° to 45°. 

The Weight of the Authority. 

I have said Allefonsce has never been doubted. He was distinguished 
for his probity, character, accomplishments, and trustworthiness as a man 
and a pilot. Whoever cares to question this may have his attention 
directed to Margry (at great length), and to the " Cosmography " and 
" Singularitez " of Thevet. I have already referred to what Brevoort, 
Hakluyt, Kohl, D'Avezac,^ have said, and to the record of long service 
as professional pilot on both sides of the equator in the Atlantic, and 

1 Thorfinn's Saga says, '^Before the river were great islands." 

* Gaffarel must have seen the manuscripts, which, being in Old French script, were, as I con- 
ceive, difficult to read, and not likely to make a favorable impression An expert, at the Biblio- 
theque, for my use converted the ancient into modern French characters, and this copy came 
with the photographic copy of the original. They were translated for me by the Professor of 
French at Wellesley College. Others have copied and printed occasional portions of the manu- 
scripts, — as Rev. Dr. De Costa and the late Mr. Murphy. It is not to be wondered at that there 
have crept into both some misprints, which seriously affect the sense. 



42 DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 

also in the Indian Ocean and Southern Pacific. The best answer, pos- 
sibly, to personal criticism of Allefonsce is this : Of all the sea-captains 
of France he was chosen by the King to be the pilot of Eoberval's ex- 
ploring expedition, — virtually undertaken to supersede the gifted Cartier, 
at a time when the passage through to the Pacific was the most important 
geographical problem before the world. 

Why was this? Had Cartier failed to find the "Northwest Passage" 
for lack of a competent pilot? At all events, a change was made. 
The King wanted the lest pilot of the realm to accompany a new admiral. 
The occasion in his opinion justified it. 

As I have intimated, the " Cosmography " of Allefonsce is not elegant 
French. There is in the composition an air of its having been dictated, 
and the phrases taken down verhatim. This may have been done by 
Secalart, whose name appears with that of Allefonsce, although the 
titlepage of the manuscript is wanting. Be that as it may, never for 
a line is the sense of personal responsibility for what he is saying — the 
pride of the pilot — wanting. His relation was written at a time when 
America was still supposed to be made up of islands, — as indicated on 
Cosa's map, on Gastaldi's, on Euscelli's, and specifically in the text of 
Ramusio.^ He suspected, as others did, the connection of Stony Brook 
with the St. Lawrence, as indicated on maps in my possession, and the 
other branch of the Charles with Buzzard's Bay, or Narragansett ; and 
Thevet seems to have had the latter notion. There are many maps of 
the period^ indicating this idea. 

1 " From the reports of Cartier, we are not clear as yet whether New France is continuoas with 
the Terra Firma of the Provinces of Florida and New Spain, or whether it is all cut up into islands; 
and whether through these parts one can go to the Province of Catai, as was written me many years 
ago by Sebastian Cabot, our Venetian." (See Kohl's " Discovery of America," p. 380.) 

= Verrazano's map (MaioUo's), 1524-1527, and Ribero's, 1527-1529, seem to have been among 
the first, if not the very first, to present a correct idea of the continuity of the coast. 



defences of norumbega. 43 

Ekrors in estimating Longitudes and Distances at Sea. 
How near Allefonsce came. 

Distances are estimated in leagues and latitudes ; but in a region of 
ocean currents, like that from the north along our coast southward as 
far as Hatteras, these could only be approximate. Besides the Arctic 
current, there are, as we know, the great tidal oscillations which make 
strong currents near the shore in alternate directions, twice daily, in the 
region of Cape Ann and Cape Cod. Still, the latitudes of 1542, when 
Allefonsce was here, were in the main trustworthy, certainly within a 
degree. Verrazano obtained (at anchor), in the harbor, precisely the lati- 
tude of Newport in 1524 ; but he states in a communication to the King 
his difficulty in making observations when at sea. Allefousce's record and 
paragraphs cited at length in Margry recognize something of the same 
difficulty. Thevet gave latitudes at a later day, as already noted, with 
great precision. There can be no doubt as to the general trustworthiness of 
Allefonsce's latitudes. We shall see, further on, that other geographers 
and explorers sustain him. 

Allefonsce's Original Charts, and those of Others who held as 

He did. 

The photographic copies of the two sketches in the manuscripts of 
Allefonsce in the Bibliotheque Nationale, to which I have referred, lead 
the column. One is of the island of Cape Breton at the mouth of the St. 
Lawrence, in latitude of 45° to 48° ; and the other includes the islands 
off the Maine coast and the region immediately south of the Cape 
Breton in the forty-third degree, from the Baya de Eockas of Ruysch 
(1507) — the bay against the Beverly, Manchester, and Gloucester shores 
— southward, including the rocks and islands at the mouth of the 
Charles ; also Cape Cod and the salients and islands still farther south. 

I place before the photographs tracings made by Rev. Dr. De Costa 
and Mr. Murphy, and after them a succession of maps showing that 



44 DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 

the association of Cape Breton and St. Johan, remarked by Allefonsce as 
in the forty-third degree, arose with John Cabot and Cosa, and has been 
perpetuated by many cartographers and writers, of whom Dr. Slaiter is 
the latest, to identify the latitudes and by good fortune the geographical 
names of John Cabot, — Cape Beeton [the Cabo de Yngla Terra] and 
St. Johan [St. Johan of Cosa]. See also charts of equivalents of Cape 
Breton and St. Johan, of the forty-third degree. 

The Relation op Allefonsce to the two Cape Bretons 

The object in this sheet of maps is mainly to show that there were 
iwo Cape Bretons. The whole series of facsimiles is full of testimony relate 
ing to early New England cartography; and as the map is detached, 
it may be conveniently used to illustrate the various points of the 
argument. 

Fii'st. There is an island, which early received and still bears the name 
of Cape Breton, lying between the forty-fifth and the forty-eighth degrees 
of latitude. 

Second. There is another Cape Breton, — " also called an island," — also 
"called St. John," which is in the forty-third degree. This cape and 
island no longer bear either of the several designations recognized by 
Allefonsce. 

The second cape is now called Cape Ann, and is not recognized as 
an island. It is, with Gloucester, separated from the mainland by a canal 
and the Annisquam River, observed by Gomez in 1525, and called, as 
already mentioned, canal St. Julian = St. Johan, — the former a misread- 
ing, so I conceive, of the manuscript record communicated to Harrisse. 

This is the original island of John Cabot's Landfall in 1497, 
and bears the name and date on Lok's map. 

Third. There is the pair, Cape Breton and St. Johan, in the forty- 
third deo-ree. 







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DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 45 

Alleponsce in eegard to the two Cape Bretons, and the Twin Name op 
THE Cape in the Forty-third Degree. 

List of Maps : — 

1. Restoration by Rev. Dr. De Costa of the first sketch made by AUefonsce of 
the island of Cape Breton at the mouth of the St. Lawrence. 

2. Restoration by Mr. Murphy of the second sketch, in the forty-third degree, 
by AUefonsce, showing Rio Norumbega. 

3. Photograph copy of the pen-and-ink sketch by AUefonsce of the region of 
the Island of Cape Breton, between the parallels of forty-five and forty-eight 
degrees of latitude. 

4. Photographic copy of a pen-and-ink sketch by AUefonsce, embracing the 
forty-first, forty-second, forty-third, and forty-fourth degrees of latitude, according 
to his relation ; also Cape Breton and St. Johan (Cape Ann), Cap de la Fran- 
ciscane (Cape Cod), and, of course, Rio Norumbergue, which lies between, being 
in the forty-third degree. 

5. To the left, Thevet, from relations, including the forty-first, forty-second, 
and forty-third degrees. (See Cosmography, 1575.) 

6. To the right, Thevet's map in his " Cosmography." 

This is an obvious copy of Mercator's (1569), which is given on the sheet 
(page 32) entitled, "Was there a City of Norumbega?" It shows the site of 
Fort Norumbega and of the city of Norumbega, on a river between C. des Bertoens 
C. de Arenes. In his relation Thevet gives the latitude, as already noted, of the 
mouth of the Norombegue River as 42° 14. 

7. Lok's map (or tracing), 1582, incorporating and indorsing the site of the 
Landfall of John Cabot in 1497, presenting the mouth of the Charles and the 
supposed (Verrazano) isthmus separating the Atlantic from the Pacific, — the Mare 
Indicum and Mare Verragana, — near Barnstable. A photographic fac-simile is 
given on the sheet of maps (page 32). 

8. Cosa, 1500. Conceived to be a free-hand sketch (by a sailor under Cabot, 
who afterwards shipped with Cosa) of the coast along which John Cabot sailed 
in 1497, — after his Landfall. It presents Cavo de Yngla Terra, and Cavo de St. 
Johan, — the equivalents of Cape Breton and St. Johan, on Lok's map, — the mouth 
of the Charles, with its rocks and islands, and the ancient islands (now joined 
to the mainland) at the terminus northward of Cape Cod, identified by Rev. Dr. 
Slafter. 



46 DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 

9. Linschot (also called Hakluyt Martyr). It contains Cape Britton (for 
Breton) and I. S. Joha. 

10. Merriam gives C. Breton and S. Johan at the north, and P. (Promontorium) 
Coaranes — and its (not recognized) equivalent, the duplicate C. de las Arenas — at 
the south. 

11. Jomard gives C. Breton and I. de S. Joha at the north of R. Grande, the 
earliest name of the Charles. 

12. Diego Homem, 1558. Boston Harbor, with the Cape of Many Islands 
(Cohasset), between Cap de Arenas (Cape Cod) and C. des Bertoens (Cape 
Breton) and Ribero de S. Johan [the Canal of Gomez]. 

It is well to pause a moment and dwell on the significance of these 
geographical determinations. They hold the key to the comprehension 
of aU the ancient maps of the New England coast. This sheet of maps 
carries uniformly and together the two names, — Cape Breton and St. 
Johan, — applied to the island in the forty-third degree. 

The island is indicated on many maps. But on that of Lok it is 
merged in a larger island ; and the canal and Annisquam River are not 
indicated.^ 

1 I have felt a strong suspicion that in the Dauphin map of 1546 (D'Avdzao and Kohl make 
an earlier date; but it is now ascribed to Desceliers, with the date of 1546), and that of Sebastian 
Cabot (1544), there was an effort made by the map-makers to present the rival claims of the two 
sovereigns of France and England to the New England coast. They were challenged by the Spanish 
map of Ribero of 1527-29. 

John Cabot laid the foundation of the British claim in 1497; Verrazano, that of the French 
in 1524, — if we exclude that based on the presence in this latitude of the Bretons at least 
half a century earlier. 

In Cabot's time (Columbus's time) it was, as we know, the prevailing notion that the whole 
Western World was a cluster of islands, — the extension of the East Indies ; hence we have 
Cabot's Landfall on an island. It is better shown on Gastaldi and Ruscelli. But the real 
island, which was Cabot's St. Johan, was the part cut ofE by the Annisquam River, — the canal 
St. Johan, leading to Annisquam Bay (see Bollero's map, page 39, and Coast Survey of Cape Ann, 
pages 37-38). The harbor of Gloucester was the St. John's of John Rut, — the St. Johan associ- 
ated by Allefonsce with Cape Breton in the forty-third degree, in the passage, " the Cape of Breton 
. . . wMcJi is also called S. Johan, and many other ports in the Mer Oceane, in the forty-third de- 
gree." The continuity of the coast — the fact of a continent — seems to have been wholly accepted 
by Verrazano in 1524. Ribero's map appears to have rested mainly on Spanish charts. Some 



DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 47 

Let the reader look for the names Cape Breton and St. Johan as 
companions. 

Next look for Carenas (Cape Cod) on Lok's map as associated with 
these companions, and always at the south. 

Then look for the river between these two points, — earliest known 
as the Rio Grande on Ruysch's map, now as the Charles on the last map 
of the series, — the Coast Survey of Massachusetts Bay, — on which the 
outline of the coast in the forty-third degree is presented. 

The testimony of Champlain, taken in connection with the site of 
the City of Norumbega, will be further considered hereafter. 

Let us now return to Thevet. 

First of all, in his text he places Norombegue as a co%intry in the 
forty-third degree, where Allefonsce places the city of Norumbegue. He 
gives for the latitude of the mouth of the Charles River (Nantasket 
Roads), as already cited, 42° 14'. This can vary but a few minutes, 
whether we take Nantasket Roads as the mouth, or the East Boston 
Ferry, or the Charles River where it enters the Back Bay at Brook- 
line Bridge, from about 42° 20',^ — the accepted latitude of Boston. 

Thevet calls Cape Cod, as we have seen. Cape Arenas (strictly 
C darencs) ; Champlain called it Cap Blanc ; the Dauphin map. Cape 
Sablons (Cdes sablons) ; the Dutch, Witte Hoeck, — all so calling it 
because of the presence or u<hiteness of its sand. Cape Arenas differs but 
little from the Cape de Arenas (Cape of the Sands) of Mereator, and is 
very near in sound to the (Promontorium) Coaranes (of Merriam?), the 
nearest equivalent in pronunciation to the Icelandic name Kjolrnes, of which 
Kjalarnes of Thorwald is the genitive, as given by native Icelanders, — 
the inherited Carenas of Lok, and, probably, of the time of John Cabot. 

of it came doubtless through Ayllon and the pilot Miruelo of a voyage made in 1520, — eight hun- 
dred leagues northward of the Bahamas. (See Peter Martyr, "Decades," vii. chap, ii.) It may have 
received material from the Portuguese Cortereal, 1504, and the geographer Ruysch, 1507. (See 
list of Maps, page 32.) 

» Strictly 42° 21' 27.6" applies to the State House. 



48 



DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 



I submit a table of successive or alternate names borne on the maps 
of the three most important points in the forty-third degree ; namely, — 



River Charles. 
Mess-adchu-sec ^ (Massachusetts) 
Mishaum (Big Eel, Indian) 
E. du Guast (Champlain) 
R. Gas (Champlain ; also De Laet) 
R. Norombegue (Norumbega) 
R. Gamas — Gomes ^ 

Anguileme (French for Eel) 
Rio Grande 
Rio Grade ^ 



Cape Cod. 

Witte Hoeck 
Cape James * 
Cap Blanc 

Cape Cod 5 
Cap des Sablons 
Cabo de Baxos 

C. de Arenes 
C. de Arena 
C. de Arenas 
P. Coaranes 
Carenas 
Kjolrnes 
Kjalarnes 



Cape Akn. 
Cape Tragabigzanda ^ 
Cap des Isles ^ 
Cape Breton 

Cape Brytaine 
Cape Bryton 
Cape Bretton 
Cape Britton 
Cape Bretan 
Cape Britonum 
Cape Berton 
Cape Bertam 
Cape Berto 
Cape Brittain 
Cavo de Yngla terra ^ 
Cavo de Brittoni 
Cape Britain^ 

Island of St. Johan 
Cape Sfc. Johan 
Cape St. Jean 

Thevet calls Cape Ann Cap Sainct Jean ; Allefonsce called it St. Jehan. 
Capt. John Rut (1527) called the Harbor of Gloucester St. John's;^" Lok 
also gives S. Johan, and Cosa gives Cavo St. Johan." Gomez gives the 
Canal St. Julian (St. Johan); Homem, the River St. Johan. 

i John Smith. 2 Rasles. ' Champlain. * Charles I. * Gosnold. ' Gomez. 

' Ruysoh. 5 Cosa. ^ John Cabot. 

I" Capt. John Rut (1527) found St John's (Gloucester) — see Purchas, vol. iii p. 809 — a harbor 
full of fishing-vessels, twenty-five leagues south of Cape de Bas and Cape de Bas Harbor (names 
on Verrazano's maps and on the Dauphin map). It is also on the Coast Survey and State maps 
as Bass Harbor Head and Bass Harbor, on the southeast coast of Mt. Desert. 

" On Cosa's map we have with Cavo St. Johan, as we have seen, Cavo de Yngla terra, the 



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DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 49 

Thevet's 7nap (Mercator's of 1569) has Cape Breton where in his text 
is given Sainct Jean ; so that in this — the association of the pair of 
names — Thevet and Allefonsce agree. 

Thevet distinguished in his text, as Allefonsce did, between the more 
northern Cape Breton (associating with it Isle Oiseaux, Isle Brion, Isle St. 
Jean, etc.), at the mouth of the river of Canada (the St. Lawrence) in 
45°-48°, and the southern Cape Breton in the forty- third degree, having 
also the name Sainct Jean (St. Johan). This Cape Breton in the forty- 
third degree, called also St. Johan, was — 

THE LOST ISLAND OF ST. JOHN, of John Cabot on Lok's 

Map, 1582.1 

I have prepared another group of maps designed to present the 
equivalent names on each of the points between Cape Ann and Cape Cod, 
and to some extent farther north and south. The sheet includes Cosa, 
Maiollo's Verrazano, Ribero, Huth, Agnese, Vallard, Wytfliet, Sebastian 
Cabot (1544), Gastaldi, Champlain (1632), and John Smith (1614). The 
reader will remark the invariable order of succession of the names. 

On Cosa's Map. 

Cavo de Yngla terra and Cava S. Johau (Cape Ann). 

Ha de la Trinidad (Claudia and Baker's Island), and against them Salem Harbor. 

C. de Lizarte. (Nahant : was it Lizarte from its shape ?) 

Rocks and Islands at the mouth of the Charles. 

(Port aux Isles of Champlain ; Cohasset of Lescarbot, Champlain, Winthrop, and 

Coast Survey.) 
Flag at the Gurnet. 

Two Islands at the end of Cape Cod, — one behind Provincetown ; the other oppo- 
site ; both now continuous with the mainland. 

Portuguese for the original name of Britain (Eng-f Angle] land). This Briton (Britonum of Ptolemy), 
with the later advent or recognition of the presence of the Breton-French in this latitude, became 
Breton, Terra los Bretones, and Terra dus Bretones, besides taking on other forms. Hakluyt speaks 
of the men of St. Maloe of Bryiaine (Breton). This is made plain on looking at the series of maps 
on page 4.5. 

1 See Professor Ganong, Cartography of Gulf of St. Lawrence, etc. Sec. II. 1889. P. 45. 



50 DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 



On MaioUo's Verrazano. 



Cape Breton (Cape Ann), Paradiso, Refugio, and Flora, Saul6um Pormtoriuz 

(Salem and Marblehead ?). 
Anguileme (Charles River and mouth, Boston inner harbor, — Back Bay and 

flooded marsh). 
Isthmus (Neck at Barnstable). 
Terra Florida (Cape Cod). 

On Ribero'a. 
Terra les Bretones (Cape Ann). 
Areciffe (Nahant). 

Archipelago of Gomez (Boston outer harbor). 
C. d. Muchas Islas (Cohasset). 
C. d. Arenas (Cape Cod). 

On Agnese's. 

Terra de los Britones (Cape Ann). 

Terra che Descobrio, Stevan Gomez (New France). 

C. d. Muchas Islas (Cohasset). 

C. St. Maria (Cape Cod). 

On VallardCs. 
C. Breton (Cape Ann). 
R. de Gamas (Gomez, Charles). 
Cape de le Croix (Nantasket). 
Southern Cape de Croix (The Gurnet). 
C. de Arena (Cape Cod). 



Rio Grande (Charles). 
C. de las Islas (Cohasset). 



On Wytfiiefa. 



On Sebastian Cahofs (1544). 
Prima visa (Mt. Agamenticus). 
Prima tierra vista (Cape Ann). 
C. de Muchas Is. (mouth of Charles), — Cohasset. 
Baya de S. Maria (Boston Harbor). 



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DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 51 



On Crastaldi's. 



C. Breton (Cape Ann and Isle St. John). 

Salem Neck and Harbor, Marblehead, and Baker's Island. See " the letter M." 
" Landfall of John Cabot and Site of Norumbega." 

On Champlain's (1632). 
Cap des Isles (Cape Ann). 

Beauport (Gloucester). See map of 1612 and relation. 

Chouacoet (Cohasset). Champlain was confused with two Chouacoets, — one at 
the mouth of the Saco ; the other at the mouth of the Charles. 
Rio du Gas, the duplicate Charles. 
Port aux Isles (entrance to Boston Harbor). 
Port St. Louis (Plymouth). 
Cap Blanc (Cape Cod). 

On John Smith's (1614). 

Cap Tragabigzanda ; also called Cape Anna (Cape Ann). 
Bristow (Salem). 
Cary Isles (Cohasset). 
Point George (The Gurnet). 
Cape James (Cape Cod). 

I have placed on a separate sheet the various names that have been 
conferred on — 

The River Charles. 

On Ruysch, 1507, — Rio Grado (Rio Grande, Charles). 

On Maiollo's Verrazano, 1524-27, — Anguileme (French) = Mishaum (Indian). 

Peter Martyr, 1534 (Lenox Library) ; Rio Stevan Gomes. 

Allefonsce, 1542, — Norombergue. 

Thevet, 1556, — Norombegue. See relation and maps on other sheets. 

Desceliers' , 1546, — Anorobagra or -gea. 

Friere, 1540, — Rio de Gamas. 

William de Teste, — Anoragua. 

Mercator, 1569, — Rio Grande. 



52 DEFENCES OF NOKUMBEGA. 

Wytfliet, 1597, — R. Grande. 

John Dee, 1580, — R. de Gamas. 

John Dee, 1580, — with added names, R. de Gamas. 

Solis, 1598, R. Grande. 

Molineaux Globe, 1592, — Rio Grande. 

Merriam, — Ri. de Gomez. 

Champlain, 1612, — River with settlement and Harbor against Chouacoet 
(Cohasset). Also, farther south, a duplicate called R. du Gas, with lake at the end, 
and the name Trocois. In the text R. Guast. In De Laet, R. du Gas. 

Winthrop, 1634, — Charles. 

Let us now turn to the moutli of the river between the two great 
capes, — Cape Breton = St. Johan (Cape Ann), and Cape de Arenes 
(Cape Cod). 

Thevet says : — 

"As for the Bay Sainte Marie [Boston Harbor], and the capes which on 
the sea-charts are marked 'St. Jean, double' [two salients? — our Cape Ann 
has two salients], and the Cape of the Sands=Cape de Arenes [Carenas, Cape 
Cod], . . . they are in three hundred and seven degrees longitude and thirty- 
eight degrees of latitude ; ^ . . . they are thirty-five leagues apart. . . . Sailing 
out of said river, and steering towards Spain or France, you leave the Cape 
of the Isles [Cohasset], which you see some eight leagues out into the sea; then 
if a rough sea or storm should overtake you, you can anchor in the river of 
Norombegue in . . . 42° 14' latitude." 

Forty-two Degrees Fourteen Mibtutes, — the Latitude of 
THE Mouth of Norumbega Kiver! 

Consider for a moment what this means. 

On a north and south coast, all that is necessary to determine the site or 
locality is its latitude. 

1 Possibly a blunder in copying, ■which is however corrected in the next sentence by the 
mention of the observed latitude of Nantasket Roads, — the mouth of the Charles, — 42° 14'. It 
may have been that Thevet was thinking of the extension of the sandy shores southward. It may 
have been that for the moment he recalled the Chesapeake Bay, — also bearing, like Boston Har- 



DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 53 

Let US turn again to the forty-third degree. What river is this whose 
mouth offers a road to shelter a vessel prematurely sailing eastward 
to sea ? In 42° 14' are the Nantasket Roads ! The precise latitude 
according to the Coast Survey is 42° 18'. On the next page of Thevet 
the Iroquois name for Nantasket {Aiayascon, — the human arm)^ is given, 
and the region described. It is the mouth of the Charles, on which 
river Watertown is situated. 

Again, Thevet says : — 

"Having left Florida [that is, Cape Cod, the Florida of Verrazano] on the 
left hand, with all its islands, gulfs, and capes, a river presents itself which 
la one of the finest rivers in the world, which we call Norumbega, and the 
Aborigines Agguncia, and which is marked on some charts as the Grand River.^ 
Several other beautiful rivers enter into it, and upon its banks the French for- 
merly erected a little fort, about ten or twelve leagues from its mouth, which was 
surrounded by fresh water; and this place was named the Fort of Norumbegue, 
Some pilots would make me believe that this Norombeguieu country is the proper 
country of Canada; but 1 told them this was far from truth, since this country 
lies in the forty-third degree N., and that of Canada in fifty or fifty-two degrees. 

" Before you enter the said river, appears an island surrounded by eight 
small islets [see Huth's map among the charts of the forty-third degree — Kohl], 
which are near the country of the Green Mountains [our Blue Hills] and to 
the Cape of the Islets [Cohasset]. Hence you sail along into the mouth of 
the river, which is dangerous from the great number of thick and high rocks 
[Miuot's Ledge and others], and its entrance is wonderfully large.^ About three 
leagues into the river an island presents itself to you that may have four leagues 

bor, the name St. Marie. Sandy Hook was also called Cape de Arenas (Cape of the Sands). It 
may have been confusion in his recollections. The cosmography was apparently wiitten many 
years after he was on our coast. 

1 See De Laet, 1633. 

^ The name on Ruysch's map is R. Grado, the lingual equivalent of Rio Grande on Merca- 
tor's and many other maps in the country discovered by the Portuguese (Cortereal), as mentioned 
by AUefonsce. The strikingly accurate outline of coast from Cape Ann to the mouth of Narragansett 
Harbor, given as a part of Asia, was in keeping with the geography of the times. 

' I visited Cohasset and Scituate Beach, and had no difficulty in verifying the truth of Thevet's 
observations. 



54 DEFENCES OP N0EUM3BEGA. 

in circumference, inhabited only by some fishermen and birds of different sorts, 
which they call Aiayascon [Nanatasket = Nantasket] ^ because it has the form of 
a man's arm, which they call so. Its greatest length is from North to South." 

It needs no apology for dwelling on this peculiar promontory, pre- 
served by Thevet and Champlain. This salient, like a bent human arm, 
appears on Champhin's map (1612) near Chouacoet, as well as on WMhrops 
map (1634) near and within Coney hasset, and on Wood's and the Coast 
Survey near Cohasset, besides in TJievefs text, and on my tracing from 
local maps of the "river flowing through a lake to the sea." Chouacoet 
appears on Lescarlofs map of 1609, but Nantasket is not defined. But 
besides the arm, and the cape Cohasset, there is the indication of the 
archipelago as Cape of Many Islands, Cap de Lagus Islas, C. de Muchas 
Islas, and the river and settlement on the Charles. 

Altogether are there not here too many elements of coincidence to 
permit any doubt as to the identity of the ancient river Norumbega with 
the Charles? 

Let us pass on to explain the confusion in Champlain's maps, cleared 
up by his text. 

There is another Nantasket and also another Cohasset described 

AND FIGURED BY ChAMPLAIN. 

At the mouth of the Saco, just south of Cape Elizabeth, there is 
an Elbow, and also a chain of rocks (an Algonqum Chouacoit), — corre- 
sponding in so far with our Nantasket (the bent arm, — the Aiayascon 
of Thevet) and our chain of rocks, still called Cohasset Rocks. The 
name Chouacoet is given on Champlain's smaller map of the region 
of the Saco and Cape Elizabeth, as recognized by Dr. Slafter, and is 
given as applied to the river in Champlain's text, although it does not 
appear on the large maps of 1612, 1613, or 1632. 

* Nantucket is sometimes written on early maps Nanatucket. Na by itself means "divide." 
Nona, Nana, Trumbull suggests, means "both sides," as of a river or of a strait, — land divided 
by water ; a feature of the south shore, of parallel inlets now closed by sand banks. 



DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 



65 



I insert the map of Saco Bay, with the arm and the chain of 
rocks, with its long houses and stockade enclosure.^ The " Cape of 
the Isles" of Champlain (our Cape Ann) is between the two Choua- 
coets. Between that of Saco Bay and that at the mouth of the Charles 










FROM "VOYAGES OF CHAMPLAIN," EDITED BY DR. SLAFTER. 

River there is but one cape, and that is near the Beauport of Champlain, 
which Dr. Slafter recognizes as Gloucester. Champlain, confused in his 
memory because of the two Chouacoets, placed on his map of 1632 

' They are such in form and purpose as Thorfinn set up in Vineland in 1007 to protect Gudrid 
and her child Snone during the absence of the husband and father at Straumfjord, as mentioned 
in the Sagas. 



56 DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 

(twenty-eight years after his first exploration) the Cape des Isles (Cape 
Ann) and Beauport (Gloucester), both of them south of the Charles. 
This brings them nearer to Port St. Louis (Plymouth), leaving the com- 
pressed contour of Cape Ann without the name Cap des Isles, which 
he has given in his text. But although he fails to give any name 
to this cape (Cape Ann) on his maps, he gives on the map of 1612 
the indentations corresponding to Annisquam harbor on the north, and 
Gloucester (his Beauport of the text) on the south, of the cape ; also 
the duplicated river Charles, — the northerly one, with the archipelago 
and Nantasket at its mouth, and the cluster of cabins on its left bank ; 
and the southerly one, issuing from a lake having several settlements and 
the name Yrocois on its banks. 

The explanation of Champlain's confusion is simple and obvious. 
There were then, as there are now, two sets of localities, — each having 
two striking features ; each included a Nantasket and a Chouacoet, — 
an arm and a cluster of rocks. One set was at the mouth of the Saco, 
north of Cape Ann ; the other was at the mouth of the Charles, south of 
Cape Ann. Champlain personally visited only the northern one. To see 
this clearly, one must look first at the coast outline on any detailed 
modern map from Cape Cod to Portland ; then at the maps of Cham- 
plain of 1612, 1613, and 1632, and at the smaller one of Chouacoet.^ 

1 "Cohasset" is an abbreviation. The Algonquin -word as a whole is Quonno-Tiassun-et. The 
Qu = ^ in Kennebec, for which we have Cli in Chouacoit, and C in Connecticut (Trumbull). Quonno 
means "long;" hassun means "stone; " et means "at " or " near." Winthrop gives an abbreviated 
form, writing the name as he heard it, — Coneyhasset. What Champlain heard — Chouacoet, or 
Chouacoit — was very nearly what we write, — Cohasset. It is, as we see, like most aboriginal 
names, descriptive. It applied to the chain of rocks near Richmond, south of Cape Elizabeth. It 
applied with more force to the scattered rocky islets near the coast to the southeastward of the 
entrance to Boston Harbor. The name might be looked for wherever the natural features of 
rocks rising from water were nearly the same as at either Chouacoet. Champlain applies it to 
the river Saco. 

This particularity and repetition are needed, and will find their justification in view of the dupli- 
cation and confusion of Champlain's maps. The same extenuation may be urged for other and 
multiplied repetitions, as of latitudes, and essential points in varied connections. The repetitions 
have enabled me to omit long and much less satisfactory text. 



DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 67 



Cape Breton and St. Johan, — our Cape Ann. 

Let us glance at the history of our Cape Ann, — the earlier Cape 
Breton, and St. Johan, — that lies between the two Cohassets. 

Its present name was given it by Prince Charles, in honor of the 
Queen his mother (Anne), — as he also gave, or recognized as having 
been given, the name Bristow (Salem) to the point to which John Cabot 
came in 1497, lat. of 42° 31' 19".^ Bristow appears at the same point 
on Montana's map and De Laet's, as well as on numerous French, and 
on other German and Dutch maps. 

John Smith had earlier given to Cape Ann the name Tragabigzanda, 
in memory of a friend during his captivity in Turkey.** Before John 
Smith's time, the cape had long been called, especially by the early 
French, Cape Breton ; and the region about was called the " Land of 
the Bretons" (Terra los Bretones), and also "Muchas gentes," — a hint of 
significance, as will later become apparent. The French were here from 

^ Bristol, in its vicissitudes as a geographical name, became Bristow, Visto, and Briso. Briso, 
regarded as French, became Brisa, and was applied to very small rocky islets, which Anglicized 
became "breakers;" and "breakers" at last applied to a larger one of the islands became 
Baker's, — the present name, of the original Claudia, which offered an anchorage and shelter 
to Winthrop in 1630, as well as — accepting the evidence of Cosa's map — to John Cabot in 1497, 
and possibly to earlier explorers and missionaries. 

It was customary for discovei-ers to give the name of the port from which they set out to 
that of their first landing. John Cabot sailed from Bristol, or Bristow, England. The latter 
name is on numerous maps, at or near the site of Salem. Verrazano gave the name of Dieppe, 
the port of his departure, to his Landfall on Cape Cod, which he supposed to be Florida, on 
which he had intended to strike, and called it Terra Florida. Had he landed on the coast near 
the site of St. Augustine, we should probably have had a Dieppe at the South. Numerous 
towns in New England bear the names of the towns in old England from which the original 
settlers came. 

The name Johan, it has been suggested, besides being given to the island because John Cabot 
came upon the first sight of land on the 21th of June, his birthday, — his Saint John's day, — was 
also given to the Blue Hills of Milton, the "Montes Johannis," a great landmark for mariners 
to-day. 

" See the table of names by which Charles River has been known, pages 48 and 51. 



58 DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 

some time in the fifteenth century.^ The name, as we have already seen, 
runs back to the Portuguese name of England, Ytigla Terra. (See Cosa's 
map, pages 43-44. 

Local Map of Cape Ann. 

I introduce a fragment of the Coast Survey — the local chart of Glouces- 
ter Harbor — to show, in this connection, one or two other points that con- 
nect themselves with the observations of Verrazano and Gomez. 

On the local map of Cape Ann we have Norman's Woe Rock and Nor- 
man's Cove, palpably pointing to the Northmen and to the name {N)or- 
anhega near Cape Breton on Jerome Verrazano's map, 1527.^ These are 
associated with the canal St. Julian (St. Johan) of Gomez ^ (confounded 
in earlier times with the Gut of Canso),* leading through to Squam Eiver 
and Anni-Squam Harbor, making the island of St. Johan of Cabot, so long 
confounded with the island of Cape Breton at the mouth of the St. Law- 
rence. (See Gastaldi's and many others of the maps herewith submitted.) 

It will be seen that Gloucester Harbor is the Beauport of Champlain, as 
well as the St. John's of John Rut^ and the (N)oranbega of Verrazano. 

1 Indeed, the French were in the basin of the Charles when John Smith came (1614), and later 
(1630) when AVinthrop arrived. See the Queen Regent's letter to the French minister at the 
Spanish court, Gaffarel's " Life of Thevet," p. 399, edition of 1878, Paris. 

2 I have found traces of families bearing the name Norman and Noman (a Wampanoag) in the 
history of Eastern Massachusetts. 

* This discovery by Gomez near the archipelago bearing his name, where he passed much time 
seeking to find the strait to the Western Ocean, is preserved in manuscript only, according to 
Harrisse. It is easy to see how, in imperfect chirography, Johan might be read Julian. We have 
seen on Bollero's map, 1554 (?), the " Canal of St. Juan " (page 39), opening into Squam River from 
the south. This channel, with the banks of excavation, is stUl wonderfully distinct and straight, 
as shown on the local maps; and through it, back and forth, the tide daily sweeps to sea, as it 
has for many centuries. Southac noticed and figured it early in the eighteenth century. The 
transfer of this canal and of the Cape Breton (Island) to the mouth of the St. Lawrence I 
pointed out in my earlier paper (1885) on the " Landfall of Cabot in 1497." 

* Canso ; spelled also Canseau and Campseau (Champlain), and otherwise. Canso seems a case 
of simple metathesis from Canoas, a plural form in use for the Indian word cano. Gut possibly 
is from gutta, a trough or, relatively, a channel -with, parallel sides. 

' See " Discovery of America by the Northmen." 



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DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 59 



The Mouth of Charles River Variously Indicated. 

We have, as may be seen, on the whole series of maps of the different 
sheets, names which associate the mouth of the Charles with a cluster of 
islands, — sometimes at the entrance to its mouth, to which Champlain gave 
the name Port aux Isles, and sometimes within it, as the archipelago of 
Gomez. Then follow virtual equivalents, — as Cape de Lagus Islas, Cape 
de las Islas, Cape de Muchas Islas; and then sketches indicating the islands 
at the entrance to the bay and within it; then equivalent names of the 
river. The occurrence of islands at the mouth is mentioned by Thorfinn 
in his Saga describing the approach to Vineland, — "Before the mouth of 
the river are great Islands." That, and " the small landlocked bay, salt at 
flood-tide and fresh at ebb," — the Hop (the Boston Back Bay), — and the 
" river flowing from the land through a lake to the sea," in the Vineland 
Sagas, were the chief guides to Leif s houses. (See maps, pages 51-52.) 

Plymouth Harbor. 

Many of these charts,^ it will be observed, hold the Bay of St. Chris- 
topher (Plymouth Harbor),'* San Antonio Bay and River (Jones River), the 
Blue Hills of Milton (Montana verde; also Montes Johannis), Terra Nova, 
the "New founde lande," of Henry VII. (see second patent to John 
Cabot),' one or more of them in various languages. They are all in or 

> Some of the maps are inexpressibly unique and valuable, the sole copies 1 have seen. All are 
photographic copies. They are from various sources, including the collections of Mr. Brevoort, Gen- 
eral Barlow, Rev. Dr. De Costa, Jomard, Kunstmann, Drake, Winsor's America, and of various public 
and private libraries at home and abroad, — to which I have added somewhat from the works of 
the engineer and draughtsman, Mr. George Davis, of the Water Works of the city of Cambridge. 

" I have elsewhere (See " Discovery of America by Northmen " ) pointed out that the origin of the 
name might be ascribed to the Church, — the long, narrow harbor of Plymouth and the alternate rise 
and fall of the tide suggesting the story of Saint Christopher. 

• The Henry VII. charter speaks of "New founde lande and islands." John Cabot, in his 
account of his first voyage, mentions discovering two islands "on his right" — on the home voy- 
age—besides that of his landfall. The narrow straits and the flags on Cosa's map may have been 
intended to indicate the islands of which possession had been taken. On Rotz's map, against 



60 DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 

near the port of the St. Louis of Champlain, — the Plymouth of the 
Pilgrims of 1620. 

Taking the maps together, they show that the Anorobagra of Jerome 
Verrazano, the Anguileme of (MaioUo's) Verrazano, the Norombegue of 
Thevet and the Norombergue of Allefonsce, the Mishaum of the Indians, 
the Rio du Gas and its duplicate of Champlain, the Mess-adchu-sett of Easles 
(Massachusetts), and the Charles of John Smith are all one and the same, 
and in the forty-third degree, — between Cape Ann and Cape Cod. 

Cape Breton the Cavo de Yngla Tekra of Cosa, and the 
Cape Ann of Pkince Chaeles. 

In the "Geschichte der Entdeckung Americas," 1859, Kunstmann points 
out this relationship, — to which I drew attention five years ago, in my 
letter to the President of the American Geographical Society on the 
Landfall of John Cabot in 1497, and on the site of Norumbega. This 
relationship was also early recognized by Dr. Slafter. 

Dr. Slafter says of Cape Cod, in a note to " Champlain'a Voyages," 
vol. xi. p. 79 : " It is well defined on Juan de la Cosa's map of 1500, 
aUhough no name is given to it^ One of the two islands was that on 
which Leif made his Landfall five hundred years before; one was still 
existing at the time of Gosnold, 1602, when he translated Baccalaurus* 
and called the end of the promontory Cape Cod. (See Ruysch's map, 
pages 49-50.) 

On this map of Cosa, to the northwest of the cape or islands, is the 
following inscription : " Mar desciibierta por ynglesesJ' It refers to the 

Massachusetts Bay (see Winsor'B "America") we have "The New-fonde-Londe. Quliar men goelh 
a fisching. 

1 Bacca = bay ; loo = food : baccaloo = codfish. Bacalao — Bacalaos, was long supposed to be 
the name of a country, and is found with various spelling from Point Judy (Juuide of Thevet) to the 
Straits of Belle Isle. It was the name of the fish that drew European enterprise to our shores, — 
called Bacalaos in Spain and its provinces, Cabeljau in the Dutch possessions, and Kabelyau in 
the German. It was the earlier stockfish. 






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DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 61 

Massachusetts Bay, which Englishmen had visited. Kuntsmann associates 
it with the inscription on Lok's map of 1582, "J Gabot, 1497," as 
bearing on the Landfall of John Cabot, which I pointed out, in the 
letter above referred to, as occurring not far from Cape Ann and Salem 
Neck. Icelandic records (Stephanius, 1570), as already noted, refer to 
this bit of coast northwest of " Promontoriura Vinlandiae " (Cape Cod), as 
" tvhe)-e the English have come.'' The English and Venetian flags on the 
prominences of Cosa's map unite the nationality of Cabot with that of 
the land of his adoption. (See Cosa's map, pages 43, 44 ; also map in 
" Discovery of Norombega.") 

If we look at the northern terminus of this part of Cosa's map, we 
find Cavo de Yngh Terra and Cavo de S. Johan of Cosa in place of 
Cape Breton and St. Johan of Lok.^ 

It was these two — Cape Breton and St. Johan — that Allefonsce found in 
the forty-third degree, and which maintain their companionship on so 
many maps. 

These two, also, the Cape Breton and St. Johan of Lok, the Landfall 
of Cabot, Cavo de Yngla Terra and Cavo de S. Johan of Cosa, Cape 
Sainte Jean (Double) of Thevet, the north promontory of Massachusetts 
Bay, the Cape des lies of the text of Champlain and Cape Ann of Prince 
Charles, are all clearly the same in locality. 

The name St. Johan in the forty-third degree is applied on different 
maps to a cape, an island, a river, a canal (S. Julian of Gomez), a range 
of mountains and a harbor, and seems properly, as we have seen, to be 
in the first instance ascribed to John Cabot, whose birthday, as already 
noted, — the 24th of June, his Saint's day, — was the date of his Landfall 

* Near Cavo de Yngla Terra is C. fastanalre, a name (Finis-terre) given to tlie extreme north- 
west corner of France (Little Bretagne), and also to the northwest Cape of Spain. The name 
" Fastanatre," or " Fastanaire," indicates the salient character of the spot. The addition by Thevet 
to Cape St. Jean of the designation " Double," thus recognizing the twin capes, is a fact, as already 
noted, of striking descriptive significance. It is against the " Three Turks' Pleads " of John Smith, 
the Straightsmouth, Thatcher's, and Milk Islands of modem nomenclature. 



62 DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 

in 1497. The Island St. Johan at the mouth of the St. Lawrence, became 
later, and is still known by the name of, Prince Edward's Island. 

The two names coupled by Allefonsce, — Cape Breton and St. 
Johan, — significant because of their appearing in pairs in latitudes 
three degrees apart, have added to their companionship in the forty- 
third degree the River Charles and Carenas (Cape Cod), — two names 
aliogdher warding at the north. The added cartographical relationship of 
this new couple, as we have seen, is preserved through a long series 
of maps. Besides appearing on the maps given on the sheets at page 
44, there may be mentioned vaz Douardo, Thomas Hood, and generally 
the maps of the New England coast of the sixteenth century. 

The Cape Cod seen by Dr. Slafter in the coast outline of Massachu- 
setts, on Cosa's map, finds on Lok's map its corresponding Carenas. 

This recognition carries with it, of course, that of the Eiver Charles, 
with the rocks and islands at its mouth, and also Cape Ann with its 
equivalent names. 

It will be remarked that Dr. Slafter, in recognizing the true character 
of Cosa's map in an essential particular, unites with Lok, Stephanius, 
Kuntsmann, and myself in the interpretation of one important piece of 
geographical literature, bearing on the site of the Landfalls of Leif and 
Cabot, and on the site of Norumbega. 

Nakkatives op Persons who have visited the Country or City 
OF Norumbega. 

We now come to a branch of evidence which will appeal more directly 
to the general reader. It is the record of personal experience, and may 
be subjected to a kind of critical analysis in which individual consciousness 
can play its legitimate part. Whether one feels in its full force or does 
not appreciate the conclusiveness of the evidence touching the latitude of 
Norumbega, and that of the place in a series, always at the same point, in 
the order of succession; whether he is moved by the constancy of the 
position indicated by geographical names, though in different languages, 



DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 63 

still having often the same descriptive signification, — whether either or all 
of these will crave and secure the attention to which they are entitled, 
one may not know; but personal narrative has advantages of its own, 
where the personal equation, so to speak, of the relator may be estimated. 

Vekkazano visited the Boston Back Bat. 

The earliest description, after the Vineland Sagas, of Boston Harbor and 
Back Bay is found in Verrazano's letter to the King. Verrazano made his 
landfall in the early spring of 1524 on Cape Cod, and for several months 
coasted alternately up and down, at least as far southward as to the 
entrance to Delaware Bay. On one occasion as he coasted northward, 
lie says : — 

" At the end of one hundred leagues we discovered a very delightful place among 
some small hills, eminences between which ran a very great river to the ocean,^ which 
was deep within to its mouth ; and from the sea to the enlargement of the bay the 
tide was eight feet, and through it any heavy ship can pass." [The tide fixes the 
point as north of Cape Cod. The tide rises in Boston Harbor from eight to ten feet, 
or more. Tides to the south of Cape Cod — as in Gardiner's Bay — are about three 
feet. He continues :] " As in good duty we did not wish to run the risk of penetrat- 
ing the coast without knowledge of the mouth of the river, we took the boat and 
entered the river within the country, where we found it to be thickly inhabited, and 
the people resembling the others we had seen [more or less fair ; that is, of light com- 
plexion], adorned with birds' feathers of different colors, coming toward us with 
evident delight, uttering very loud cries of admiration, indicating, if we had to land 
with the boat, where it was most safe. We entered the said river within the country 
about half a league, where we saw it formed a most beautiful lake [Boston Back 
Bay] about three leagues in compass, upon which we saw boats, thirty in number, 
moving from one part to another with innumerable people, who passed from shore 
to shore to see us." 

1 The only river in the forty-third degree flowing through a lake to the sea and having islands 
at its mouth is the Charles. Following up from this river's mouth, one enters an archipelago, — the 
archipelago of Gomez, — sometimes called the Archipelago Tramontana (Tremont); beyond this, 
with approaching banks, is a strait, with hills on either side, — Copps, Tremont, Breeds, Bunker, 
and Winter hills, — and then a land-locked bay through which a river flows. 



64 defences of norumbega. 

Naeratives of Persons who visited Norumbega. 

Next after Verrazano we have Stephen Gomez, in 1525, capturing 
natives at Norumbega and bringing them home to Spain. In manuscript 
he has left a record of the discovery of the canal St. Johan (Julian), 
which is still a monument of early engineering, connecting Gloucester 
Harbor — (N)oranbega — with Annisquam River .^ Boston Harbor long bore 
the name of the Archipelago of Gomez. 

Then Capt. John Eut, 1527, was at St. John (Gloucester) Harbor. 
See Kohl and Purchas. 

Parmentier found, in 1539, Norumbega immediately at the southwest, 
a quarter west, of Cape Breton (Cape Ann). 

In 1542 Allefonsce was in the forty-third degree. He it was who 
distinguished between the two Cape Bretons. He was seeking a strait 
through to the Pacific, and gives the latitude of Cape Ann, and with it 
the place of the river and city of Norumbegue ; he mentions the fine 
people there, and the variety and abundance of peltry. 

Thevet was on our coast in 1556, and describes in his Cosmography 
(my copy is of 1575) ^ in much detail the geography of Cape Breton and 
Cape Johan (Cape Ann), and of Cap de Arenes (Cape Cod), — called also, 
as he mentions, Francoys (Allefonsce's name was Cap de la Franciscane) ; 
determines by observation the latitude of Nantasket Roads at the mouth 
of Charles River, and gives in his text the river and the city of Norum- 
bega on its banks, and Fort Norumbega at the junction of Stony Brook 
with the Charles. All are presented on his map or in his text, or in 
both ; and from his description I went directly to the Fort in 1885. 

1 May not this narrow, straight canal have given rise to the Gutta Canoas, — " canoe gutter," — 
later transformed, and by ellipsis and metathesis become the Gut of Canso, which separates the 
northern Cape Breton from the mainland? This suggestion I ventured to make in my Address on 
the occasion of the Unveiling of the Statue to Leif Ericsson in 1887. (See " Discovery of America 
by the Northmen.") 

" See "Landfall of John Cabot, 1497, and site of Norumbega." Also, "The Discovery of the 
Site of the Ancient City of Norumbega." 



DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. ^65 

Ramusio in 1556 wrote of Norumbega, its climate, fruits, and topography. 

Ingram, as we have seen, was at Norumbega in 1569,^ and found a 
city three quarters of a mUe long. He speaks of a hega, — a sheet of still 
water (Trumbull) corresponding with that above Waltham, into which Stony 
Brook empties. Ingram's relation gives an estimate of the distance of 
Norumbega from Cape Breton of sixty leagues. He probably confounded 
leagues with miles, as Allefonsce mentions that a range of hills and rocks 
extended from near (the city of) Norumbega to the sea fifteen leagues dis- 
tant. He followed Indian trails across the continent. Such a trail is still 
to be recognized in Weston.^ These ancient trails were well known. 

Rev. B. F. De Costa copies (in N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., April, 
1890, p. 153) from (English) State Papers, Vol. I. No. 2, Public Record 
Office, London, — 

"The reports of them that have travelled the aforesaid countries, with the 
note of such things as they have found there, over and above that which Ingram 
upon his examination did confesse, whose names are Verrazanus, Jaques Cartier, 
John Barros, Andrewe Thevett, John Walker, of which number Humphrey Gilbert 
did confer in person with the three last." 

"Simon Ferdinando, 'Mr. Secretary Walsingham's man '[1579], went and came 
from the coast of Norumbega in three months." 

"John Walker, sent out by Sir Humphrey Gilbert, was within the river 
Norumbega, in 1580, IX leagues from its mouth ; on a hill on the north side 
of the river he found a silver mine. He found in one house [Indian house], 
seven miles from the river's side, 300 hides, each of 18 square feet [these may 
well have been buffalo skins]." 

Marginal Note. " Sir H. Gilbert's man brought of the Syds [sides or hides] 
of this beast from the place he discovered." 

"Humphrye Gilbert's man [John Walker], which he sent to discover the 
land, reporteth there houses to be buylt in lyke manner rounde." 

5 See " Landfall of John Cabot, 1497, and site of Norumbega." Also, " The Discovery of the 
Site of the Ancient City of Norumbega." 

2 There was a grand junction of Indian trails in the Genesee Valley, known to me in my boy- 
hood as Caghnawauga. The name appears also in Canada, and at still another point in the southwest. 
The evidence of a common language is obvious. 



66 DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 

Sir Humphrey Gilbert himself undertook his voyage for the discovery 
of Norumbega lying to the southwest of Cape Briton (Breton), in 1583. 
(Clarke ; Hakluyt.) 

Captain Jenynges, and his mate Smithe of the ship " Toby," in- 
formed Hakluyt of Spaniards who had been driven on the coast of 
Norumbega, and " lighted on a towne on a ryver's side which they 
affirmed to be above a quarter of a mile in lengthe." 

Stephen Bellinger, of Kouen, a " familiar friend " of Hakluyt, was at 
Norumbega in the year 1583, and purchased a great variety of merchan- 
dise, mainly peltry, which Hakluyt personally saw ; he found a city, and 
estimated the number of houses at eighty. Hakluyt says: — 

"This coaste of Norumbega, from Cape Breton [the northern] CC [200] 
leagues to the southwest, was again discovered at the chardges of the Cardinal 
of Burbon by my friend Stephen Bellinger, of Roan [Rouen], the last yere, 1583, 
whoe founde a towne of four-score houses, covered with the barkes of trees, 
upon a river's side, about C leagues ^ from the aforesaid Cape Breton. He re- 
ported that the countrie is of the temperature of the coaste of Gascoigne and 
Guyan. He brought home a kinde of minerall matter supposed to holde silver, 
whereof he gave me some ; a kind of muske called castor ; divers beastes skinnes, 
as bevers, otters, marterues, lucernes, scales, buffs, dere-skynnes, all dressed, and 
painted on the inner side with divers excellent colours, as redd, tawnye, yellow 
and vermillyon,^ — all which thinges I [Hakluyt] saw; and divers other merchan- 
dize he hath which I saw not. But he told me that he had CCCC and xl 
crownes for that in Roan, which, in trifles bestowed upon the Savages, stood 
him not in fortie crownes. . . . The nature and qualitie of thother parte of 
America from Cape Briton [the northern], being in 46 degrees unto the latitude 
of 52 for iij C leagues within the lande, even to Hochelaga, is notably described 
in the twoo voyadges of lacques Cartier."^ 

1 The one hundred leagues is nearer the actual distance from our Island of Cape Breton to the 
mouth of the Charles. The two hundred leagues doubtless refers to the whole extent of his sail- 
ing and discovery. It was at the best an estimate, in the light of little experience on our coast, in 
which strong tides and the arctic current prevail. 

^ Buffalo robes in commerce fifty years ago, from the West, were painted with these colors. 

* See Hakluyt's Western Planting. 



DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 67 

In another connection Hakluyt says : — 

"... My friend Stephen Bellinger of Roan, whoe departed from New Haven in 
January was twelve months, arrived at Cape Briton [the northern] in XX dales 
space, and from thence discovered very diligently, CC leagues towardes Norumbega, 
and had traficque with the people in tenne or twelve places ; foundo a towne con- 
teyninge fourescore houses, and returned home, with a diligent description of the 
coaste, in the space of foure monethes, with many commodities of the countrie which 
he shewed me." 

Raleigh's patent was dated March 25, 1584. Under this, but trans- 
ferred later to new parties, Smith made a settlement at Jamestown, dur- 
ing which he was, he says, constantly on the lookout for Norumbega. 
The name was familiar, but the locality was undetermined. 

The Testimony op Champlain to the Existence of the City of 

NOKUMBEGA ON THE ChARLES. 

The true story of Champlain has been misunderstood or altogether 
overlooked, as I conceive, for almost three hundred years. He has not 
been expected to testify to the presence of Norumbega on the Charles. His 
story is especially interesting therefore as the authority accepted and 
defended by Dr. Slafter and Dr. Parkman. 

PuRCHAS (ed. of 1613, p. 628) says : — 

" The inhabitants of these parts [region of Port Royal, New Brunswick] 
were termed Souriquois. From them westward are the people called Etschemins 
[now found at Passamaquoddy], where the next port, after you are past the river 
of St. John, is Saint Croix, where they erected a fort and wintered. Threescore 
leagues west from thence is the river Kinibeki, and from thence the land turneth 
north and south to Malabarre [part of the east face of Cape Cod]. 

" Authors place in that former extension of land betwixt east and west a great 
town and f aire river called Noromhega, hy the savages called Agguncia." 

This is almost the language of Thevet. Purchas continues : — 

" These French discoverers [De Mont's historiographers, Champlain, Lescarbot, 
Potrincourt] utterly deny this history, affirming that there are but cabans [cabins] 



68 DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 

here and there, made with perkes [poles] and covered with barkes of trees or with 
skins ; [and they follow with] and both river and inhabited place is called Pemtagoet, 
and there can be no great river (as they aifirmed ), because the great River of Canada 
[St. Lawrence] hath (like an insatiable merchant) engrossed all these water com- 
modities, so that other streams are in manner but pedlars." ^ 

It was, according to Purchas and general geographical literature, between 
the Kennebec and Cape Cod that the great town of Norumbega lay. 

From this record of Purchas it seems, as well as from the text and 
the map of Lescarbot of 1609, and that of Champlain of 1612, that 
some of De Mont's exploring parties had been advised, after their failure 
on the Penobscot in the previous year, of the looked-for locality on the 
Charles, and had visited the site of Norumbega. De Mont's officers and 
men found relatively few dwellings at the place to which they were 
conducted, the settlement some time before having, except at the season 
of fishing, ceased to be of special resort. It had dwindled with the dilu- 
tion of the Norse blood. 

The city three quarters of a mile long to Ingram in 1569, to Stephen 
Bellinger in 1583 was found to have become a town of only fourscore 
houses, covered, like the "cabans" of Champlain, "with barJces of trees." 
The houses were of perishable material, and were fewer at the time of 
De Mont's expedition than they were twenty-one years before. They were 
so few that they did not fulfil the needs of the inflamed imaginations of 
the Frenchmen. They had sought the city on the Penobscot (the Pemta- 
goet), which according to Champlain must be the river Norumbega, but had 
failed to find it. They were not only disappointed, but they were vexed. 
To be sure, the city had not been promised on the Pemtagoet, nor had the 
river or remains of dwellings there been called, by the natives, Norumbega. 
Nevertheless, Champlain had come to the conclusion that that must be 
the river on which the city of the same name would be found. It was 

1 On many early maps the country between Lake Champlain and the coast of Massachusetts is 
represented as very narrow, and on some the Lake is connected with the ocean between Cape Ann and 
Cape Cod. 





WALLS AND TERRACES ON NORTH BANK BELOW NORUMBEGA 



DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 69 

the only one having an adequate drainage basin to furnish water for a 
large river. But they did not find a city on its banks. Still inquiring 
for an ancient town, they were conducted by natives up the Charles. 
Somewhere below the inflow of a branch from the south (the Cheesecake ?) 
and another from the north (Beaver Brook?), and above the head of 
the Bay, according to the map, they found a region of scattered " cabans " 
(wigwams), which was pointed out to them (so one reads between the 
lines) as the site for which they were looking. These " cabans " figured 
on both Champlain's and Lescarbot's maps are the imperishable record of 
what was at Watertown at the opening of the seventeenth century.* 

Could men with pictures of Paris and Parisian civihzation in their 
brains have been more astounded ? 

It is conceivable that like Roger Clapp, twenty-six years later, they had 
attempted the ascent of the river with a boat of too deep draught, or at ebb- 
tide. They therefore took to the land, and approached the site of the dam 
and walls at Watertown from the north. They found the site largely over- 
grown with wood, and remains only of the perishable architecture of the 
Indians. It was too much ! Bellinger, twenty-one years before, had counted 
eighty houses. Some of them had doubtless fallen to decay; but all of 
them would have seemed few to the Frenchmen, and were, relatively, few. 
Thirteen years earlier, Ingram, estimating the length somewhere proba- 
bly from the bowlder dam, down along the walled river, with the terraces 
above (against the ancient Hunnewell gardens), found remains of what 
he called a city, three quarters of a mile long. The Dauphin map of 
1546 bore the figure of a fortified gateway to a city above the arm 
of the sea, and an armed enemy near to indicate the character of the 
locality and in some degree the extent of the city. 

1 Attention has already been drawn to the two exploring parties, and to the exhibition of two 
rivers. On one, issuing from a lake (the bega), against the mouth of Stony Brook, the name YrocoU 
occurs. This bears the name R. du gas. At the mouth of the other is the elbow of Nantasket and 
the name Chnuacoet (Cohasset). 

There may of course have been two very unlike charts by different members of one party, thus 
contributing to the confusion which led to the obscurity at this point on the map of 1632. 



70 DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 

Was this the great city, with walls and gates and towers? What 
were all the remains they found, to Frenchmen who knew of cities of 
the Old World ? The story must be a myth ! The city had never been ! 
" Those who described have never seen it," said Champlain ; and in 
mingled vexation and forgetfulness he struck out all mention of the 
city and country of Norumbega from his map of 1632. 

The sheet of maps which follows, entitled " Transition period in regard 
to Norumbega in the seventeenth century," attaches itself naturally to 
that entitled " Was there a city of Norumbega ? " It shows the confusion 
that grew, in part at least, out of Champlain's report. It perhaps also 
shows how skilfully the site of the seaport of Norumbega had been chosen. 
It was quite inland, and accessible from the sea only at high tide. 

At the mouth of the Charles we have on one of the maps a river 
Goet (betraying a confused memory of Pemtagoet), and a crowd of 
other names with little regard to actual geography. The student will 
recognize the effort of the cartographers to adjust the statements of 
Champlain with what had previously been accepted as true. In the 
struggle to do homage to Champlain's authority, we have positions 
reversed and names given as alternates. There are also other phases 
of the confusion into which cartographers were thrown by Champlain. 
Champlain (through detailed officers, if not personally present) was at the 
site of Watertown, and saw what the natives knew as the remains of the 
ancient city of Norumbega. And we have on other maps Carinas and 
Cape Breton long after Gosnold had given Cape Cod to one, and Prince 
Charles Cape Ann to the other. 

Transition Period in regard to Norumbega, Seventeenth 
Centurt. 

This series of maps presents, first, Lescarbot (1609), wUh a collection of 
cabins on or near the site of Wcdertown, on the river (Charles), at the mouth 
of which is an archipelago and a cape called Chouacoet (Cohasset). 













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DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 71 

Following this is the map of Cham plain of 1612, having on it Naran- 
bergue, which he suppressed on the map of 1632. On both maps he 
leaves the evidence of a visit made to Watertown, on the Charles Eiver. 
On the river (Charles), at the entrance to the mouth of which Champlain 
gives the elbow near Chouacoet, — given also, less distinctly, by Lescarbot ; 
described in its name Aiayascon {arm), with its latitude 42° 14', by Thevet; 
given also by Winthrop (1634) as Coneyhasset, and by Wood, and on all 
early local maps, and on the Coast Survey, as Cohasset, — on this river, 
ai the site of Watertown {that is, above the interior lay), Champlain figures a 
clmter of cabins, the evidences of occupancy. At this point are found to-day the 
walls, docU, tvharves, and basins which are ascribed by me to the ancient city of 
Norumhega. 

The three following French maps, from the collection of the late General 
Barlow, of New York, show the perplexity that followed Champlain's dis- 
covery of Norumbega on the Penobscot, or rather the failure of Champlain 
to recognize it anywhere. On the first of the three the cartographer makes 
Quinnobequin (Kennebec) and Pemtagoet (Penobscot) duplicate names of 
the same stream. This was evidently produced after the building of Fort 
Castine at the mouth of the Penobscot. 

This map also presents Vingaert's Eylan (Vineland), south of the 
Quinnibequi and against the name Cambridge, — the very site of Leif's 
houses. 

The second of the French maps restores the conditions of relative 
position. 

The third places the Kennebec north of the Pemtagoet, and gives Fort 
Pemtagoet, or Norumbegue, as an alternative, on a river, with branches 
connecting lakes and ponds, corresponding more fairly with the features of 
the Charles than with those of the Penobscot. 

Next are two maps, — Solis and Merriara, — on which impatient and 
confounded cartographers have placed every name of the Charles they could 
find. Both of them, however, are loyal to Cape Breton and Carenas, and 
to Norumbega as a province in Nova Francia. 



72 DEFENCES OF NOKUMBEGA. 

Next is a map (anonjmious) for which I am indebted to my friend 
Professor Marcou, on which is a remarkably correct outline of the coast, — 
better than Champlain's and than some others after Champlain's time, 
but retaining the earlier name of Cape de las Arenas. 

On the next map, — Winthrop (1634), — is the stone dam, built of 
rounded bowlders, as existing at and before the advent of the English, 
the site of which Winthrop has indicated in the name " rip." It was 
then as now at the head of tide water, and at ebb tide marked the com- 
mencement of ripples, — a gentle fall. Here were fisheries, with a weir, — 
authorized by Winthrop 1631-1632, and indicating a recognized fall which 
the fish could not easily pass on their way to spawning ground. 

On Winthrop's map is Coneyhasset (Cohasset), Nantasket (the elbow), 
the Back Bay, — shown on Solis, 1598, and described in the Vineland 
Sagas, and by Verrazano, — and the Charles, including the site of the 
city of Norumbega, at the line separating salt water from fresh. 

What has gone before may be regarded as having established that — 

1. There was a city of Norumbega. 

2. That its latitude was about 42° 20'. 

3. That the river on which it stood bore a name with numerous 
equivalents, which was one of a series in the forty-third degree, always 
appearing at the same point in the order of succession ; and its name was 
the Charles. 

We have thus transferred to the support of the discovery of Norum- 
bega the testimony of Champlain and Lescarbot. 

Hakltjtt's Discouese on Western Planting. 

Repeated quotations have been made from this volume. Let us glance 
at the surroundings and the times of the authority. 

In 1582 Michael Lok dedicated to his friend Sir Philip Sidney his map 
of North America, embodying the early chart of John Cabot's discovery of 



DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 73 

1497 and having on it the name "Norumbega" against a point not far 
from the mouth of the river Charles. 

This was the period of Philip Sydney, of Walter Raleigh, of Hum- 
phrey Gilbert, of Leicester, of Walsingham, of Cecil. 

It was in the reign of the Protestant Queen of England. It was in the 
life of Mary Queen of Scots. Philip II. had assumed the championship of 
the Catholic faith. Spanish galleons were filling his coffers with gold and 
silver from his American possessions. His purpose to suppress Protes- 
tantism in England had been divined. The loyal men about the throne of 
Elizabeth, led by Raleigh, conceived the idea of estabUshing in the New 
World an earlier Bermuda, — a colony ostensibly for the usual ends of 
commercial enterprise, but including a fortified seaport, from which ves- 
sels might issue under the English flag to prey upon the Spanish treasure- 
laden vessels. This would, it was urged, compel Philip to keep a strong 
naval force in American waters to convoy the ships freighted with the 
fruit of her conquests, industries, and spoliations, and so prevent the 
threatened attack of the Invincible Armada. To further this end, mainly 
at Raleigh's instance Richard Hakluyt, a young scholar of great promise, 
was employed to prepare a skilfully written argument, showing the advan- 
tages to England of the immediate colonization of Norumbega, — a country 
of undetermined boundaries, extending far to the north and south, and 
having a chief city and seaport, on the west side of the Atlantic. The 
letter, entitled " Western Planting," which he prepared, was preser%'ed in 
manuscript. Its date was 1585. Hakluyt's " Divers Voyages," containing 
Lok's map, had preceded it by three years. 

Within relatively a few years the "Western Planting" has been brought 
to hght through the efforts of the late Rev. Dr. Leonard Woods, of Bow- 
doin "college. Edited by Dr. Woods and the late Dr. Charles Deane, it 
was published by the Maine Historical Society, 1877. 

From this volume I have drawn accounts of personal visits to Norum- 
bega before 1584, to crown the geographical argument resting mainly 
on° charts, the absolute demonstration afforded by the latitudes and rela- 



74 DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 

tions of AUefonsce and Thevet, and, as has been pointed out, the unin- 
tended confirmation of Champlain and Lescarbot. 

Elizabeth had not seen her way clear to aiding from the royal treasury 
the plan of Raleigh and his friends to establish a colony earlier, by almost 
fifty years, than Winthrop's. Sir Humphrey Gilbert had been lost in his 
attempt to reach Norumbega. 

There was provided no place of security for a British fleet in American 
waters, from which corsairs might have issued to pester the Spanish gal- 
leons, and so prevent the sailing of a war fleet to attack England. 

It was deemed wiser, after the birth of James VI., to extinguish all 
rivalry between the crowns of Scotland and England by the tragedy of 
Feb. 8, 1587, at Fotheringay Castle. 

In 1588 the Armada appeared. It was happily scattered. 

It is not without its interest to students of Massachusetts history that 
the ancient city of Norumbega, at Watertown on the Charles, might earlier, 
by three hundred years, have been recognized as the first city in America 
north of the Spanish possessions. 

Winthrop's Map op 1634. 

Whoever has followed this discussion will look with interest upon 
the map produced by Winthrop in 1634 ^ from data collected, some of 
it, soon after his arrival in 1630. On this map the shaded salt water is 
indicated on the Charles up to the head of tide-water, and there sweet 
water begins on his map as it does to-day. The point which separates 
the sea water from the fresh, is marked by two bars across the river. 
On the Merrimack Winthrop marks the falls, and writes " Falls " against 
the mark. He marks a "Weer" on the Saugus. If he witnessed or 
knew of the building of a dam across the Charles at Watertown, his 

^ I have introduced a part of this map discovered by Mr. Henry Waters, the eminent 
genealogist, among the manuscripts of the Sloan collection in the British Museum. 



1 1 ill iiininh 1-^— ^ ,(„».»"■»•■..••.■... . ^>nr7yJiS5iSrii5!K»iSl 



'^mm 



DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 75 

map would have borne at this point the name " Dam." Instead of this 
it bears the name "Rip."^ 

What remains of the Walls of Norumbega. 

Do we wonder that so little of ancient Norumbega remains? What 
right have we to ask for more? What remains of the city of the 
Pharaohs of the Exodus; of Nineveh; of Troy; of Baalbec ? What have 
we of Delphi; of Phoenicia; of Etruria? What remains of the Rome 
of the Csesars? What of the York or the Chester of the Romans, and 
of the London which William of Normandy saw ? More, perhaps ; but 
relatively how much more, than still exists of Norumbega ? I doubt if 
any one can point to as much stone-wall of the Boston of a hun- 
dred years ago as the resident of Watertown may still claim to exist 
of the Norumbega of the times before the Bretons first went up the 
Charles. 

I add a photograph of a portion — perhaps a large third — of the wall 
on the north side of Charles River below Watertown, which doubtless, 
with much repair by the proprietors, fulfils to-day, as eight to nine hun- 
dred years ago it did, the office of deepening the water at high tide 
immediately below the Norumbega dam. 

What has been Established. 

At the outset of this communication it was stated that the battlefield 
of the Northmen was at Watertown. Let us see what has been established 
as the citadel of Norumbega. We may take the evidence in reverse. 

1 Rip means a sudden break in the descent from still water. It was called "falls " by Wood, 
Joscelyn, and Dunton, The dam now bears a flush-board, which rises a foot or more above the crest 
of stone, — giving a total fall at the flouring mill, less than a quarter of a mile below, of about four 
and a half feet. Viewed from the north bank, where Winthrop saw it, the gentle cascade may not 
have been seen, as the islands (wharves penetrated by docks) were wooded, and the point of view 
was to the west of the line of the dam. 



76 DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 

1. Winthrop found in the forty-third degree the falls at the bowlder dam 
across the Charles, of which the various walls of Norumbega, as a commer- 
cial seaport, are but the sequences. (See " Discovery of Norumbega," 1889.) 

2. Twenty-six years before (1604), in the same latitude, Champlain 
was conducted to the scattered remains (cabins covered with hark of trees 
and skins) of what was recognized by the natives of the neighborhood as 
Norumbega. Champlain and his associates are recorded in 1613 (Purchas, 
p. 628) as denying that these scattered dwellings were the remains of 
the Norumbega described in the literature of geography, as lying between 
the Kennebec and Cape Cod. 

3. Twenty-one years earlier (1583) Bellinger (Hakluyt's friend) visited 
the city of Norumbega, found it still to contain eighty houses covered 
with hark of trees, and carrying on an extensive and varied commerce. 

4. Three years earlier (1580) John Walker, sent by Sir Humphrey 
Gilbert, visited the north side of the river, on which the city was situated, 
nine leagues from its mouth, where he found in one house three hundred 
hides, each of eighteen square feet (buffalo skins ?). 

5. Captain Jenynges and his mate. Smith, told Hakluyt of Spaniards 
who had been driven on the coast of Norumbega, and "hghted on a 
towne on a ryvers side," which they affirmed to be above a quarter of 
a mile in length. 

6. David Ingram was at Norumbega in 1569, eleven years before "Sir 
Humphrey Gilbert's man," and foimd a city three quarters of a mile long. 

7. Ramusio (1556) describes Norumbega with great precision, as a city 
and country, and wrote of its people and products. 

8. Thevet was on our coast in 1556, determined the latitude of the 
mouth of the Charles River to be 42° 14', and wrote of the city and fort 
of Norumbega on the river of the same name, — earlier, he said, called 
on some charts the Rio Grande. 

9. AUefonsce was here in 1542-43, and determined the latitude of 
Cape Ann and the site of the city of Norumbega, on the river of the 
same name. 



DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 77 

10. Parmentier in 1539 recorded the position of the city, or country, 
with regard to Cape Breton (Cape Ann), and noted the features of 
the country. 

11. Gomez in 1525 kidnapped people of Norumbega, and carried them 
home to Spain. 

12. Verrazano (1524) visited the country, and recorded on his map 
Norse names, some of which are still preserved on our maps, — Norman's 
Oe and Naumkeag. 

13. Ayllon, in 1523, was made governor of several provinces in the 
region of the Baccalaos, extending from the mouth of the St. Lawrence 
to the neighborhood of the latitude of Bermuda, one of which was Arambe 
= Arembi (Peter Martyr), whose site was on the Gamas, — the Charles, — 
identical with that of Norumbega. Back to this point the charts indi- 
cate the presence of a city on the Charles by a significant typographical 
character. The discovery was made by Miruelo in 1520. 

14. Ruysch (1507) found here the Rio Grande, — the earliest name of 
the Charles in the sixteenth century, — with islands at its mouth, and 
Cape Cod, then an island (bearing the equivalent name of Insel Bacca- 
laurus) ; also the Baya de Rockas (Bay of Rocks), figured on subsequent 
maps, and the equivalent of the numerous breakers indicated on the 
Coast Survey charts, in the northern part of Massachusetts Bay. 

15. Cortereal was here in 1500, and left his name to the region of 
the river Norumbega. (See Kunstmann.) 

16. Cosa's map of the same date, indorsed by Dr. Slafter (the probable 
work of a sailor who had been with John Cabot), has preserved for us 
Cape Ann (Cape Britain = Cape Breton) in Cavo de Yngla Terra, — tlie 
mouth of the Charles, and also the islands, then at the summit of Cape 
Cod, but now connected by drifting sands with the mainland. 

17. Cabot's chart of 1497, indorsed by Michael Lok (1582), pre- 
sents the outline of Massachusetts Bay, its northern and southern capes, 
and the archipelago at the mouth of the Charles, and on it the name 
Norumbega. 



78 DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 



A Resume from Anothee Point of View, including Authorities. 

1. There was a region of country in America called Norumbega. — 
Charlevoix, Purchas, Champlain, Hakluyt, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Dr. John 
Dee, Eamusio, Thevet, Allefonsce, Parmentier, Gomez, Verrazano, Peter 
Martyr. 

2. There was a city of Norumbega. Numerous maps of the sixteenth 
and the early part of the seventeenth centuries show it. 

3. It was described by Allefonsce, Thevet, Ramusio, David Ingram, 
Stephen Bellinger, Hakluyt, Wytfliet, Champlain, Lescarbot, and Purchas. 

4. It was visited by Ingram, who found it three quarters of a mile 
long; later by Stephen Bellinger, who counted there eighty houses; by 
Walker, Thevet, Allefonsce, in the sixteenth century; and by a party 
under the direction of Champlain in 1604. 

5. It was situated on a river in the forty-third degree. — Allefonsce, 
Thevet, Purchas, Ogilby, Buno's Cluverius. 

6. It was in the original New France. — Verrazano, Allefonsce, Mer- 
cator, Wytfliet, and maps generally of the sixteenth century. 

7. At the mouth of the river was an archipelago. — The Vineland 
Sagas, Cosa, Euysch, Verrazano, Gomez, Ribero, Allefonsce, Thevet, Lok, 
Champlain, and the Coast Survey. 

8. At the entrance to the archipelago was a salient of the shape of the 
human arm, called Aiayascon by the Iroquois ("the human arm"), and Nan- 
tasket by Winthrop and the Coast Survey. The arm is described by Thevet ; 
figured by Champlain, Lescarbot, Winthrop, and the Coast Survey. 

9. The latitude of this arm was determined by Thevet as 42° 14'. The 
Coast Survey gives it 42° 18'. 

10. The river was called Rio Grande by Ruysch (1507), Mercator, 
Wytfliet, and others, and Norumbegue by Allefonsce and Thevet. Kohl 
and Thevet say the names " Grande " and " Norumbegue " applied to 
the same river. 



DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 79 

11. The river, whose outer mouth is at Nantasket, John Smith called 
the Charles, — the name it still bears. 

12. The site of the city, according to Purchas, speaking for the literature 
of the geography of the sixteenth century, was within the land between 
the Kennebec and Cape Cod, — the forty-thu-d degree, 

13. Champlain (1604) figured on his map (1612), and Lescarbot on 
his map (1609), between the Kennebec and Cape Cod (Malebarre), a cluster 
of houses, and described it as consisting only of scattered bark-covered 
cabins, upon the bank of a river emptying into an archipelago. 

14. At the outer entrance to the archipelago from the sea was the arm- 
shaped cape (Nantasket, — Point Allerton), without which was a rocky cape 
called by Champlain and Lescarbot — as by Winthrop, the Coast Survey, 
and local maps — Cohasset. AUefonsce and Thevet noted the rocks and 
swashings and little islets off Cohasset, the Cape of Many Islands. 

15. Above the archipelago the river flowed through a lake, landlocked, 
salt at flood-tide and fresh at ebb, figured between Carenas and Cape Breton, 
on the maps of Ortelius (1570), Solis (1598). and Botero (1603). On these 
maps at the same point above the lake (and on Solis's map, with the cipher 
indicating a city), on the Rio Grande (the Charles), are the names, respec- 
tively, Norumbega, Noruega, and Norvega,^ — all dialectic equivalents of 
Norway. All these are placed in the original New France, which held the 
site of Boston. Verrazano found the lake three leagues around, the tide 
at its mouth eight feet (the minimum measure to-day), and the shores 
thickly populated, as Thevet did, by a hospitable people. Thorfinn found 
the entrance of the river into the lake (below our present Brookline 
bridge) too shallow for navigation at low tide. The depth at this point 
at low tide is, to-day, three and a half feet. Thorfinn gave to this lake, 
through which according to Leif a river flowed to the sea, its Icelandic 
name o^H6p, — "& small land-locked bay, salt at flood tide, and fresh at 

1 The name Norvega given by Botero, 1603, to the region of Norumbega, was the same as that 
given to Norway in Europe by SoUs (of Seville), 1598; by Bernard Sylvani, 1511; and on Tabula 
Catalana, 1375-1378. 



80 DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 

ebb." As a descriptive name it applies well to-day. We call it the 
Boston Back Bay. Leif, Thorwald, Thorfinn, and Freydis, all passed 
through this Hop on their way to the site of Leif's houses.^ 

16. Thorfinn records in the Sagas before the mouth of the river " great 
islands." Allefonsce mentions them, and The vet describes them in his 
relation. Champlain calls the entrance " Port aux Isles." On many maps 
we have, here. Cape de Lagus, Muchas Islas, Lagus Mas, etc. The 
Harbor was called on earlier maps the Archipelago of Gomez. Boston 
Harbor, as we know, contains numerous islands. 

17. Roger Clapp passed through the Back Bay in 1630, to within less 
than a mile of the site of the city of Norumbega, and bartered for fish 
caught by Indians at the falls on the river above. The falls were described 
by Wood, Joscelyn, and Dunton, as a place where a fish industry was 
maintained in the spawning season. The industry, at first under personal 
charter from Winthrop, was continued from that time till some thirty 
years ago. 

18. Winthrop observed the fall (an abrupt break from still water to 
rapids). It was occasioned by a dam, — an artificial structure composed of 
massive field -bowlders. It was there when he came. It had been built by 
a people who had come and gone. Besides the dam, there were docks, 
wharves, a fishway, and a great extent of stone-wall on either side of the 
river below, — which, from its strikingly smooth face on the river side and 
its graded height and connections above and below, obviously served to 
increase at high tide the depth of water immediately below the dam. 



A Summary of the Argument in Another Form. 

The detached sheet at page 32 presents a series of maps of the New 
England coast mainly of the sixteenth century, on which appears the 
name "Norumbega," variously spelled, — applied sometimes to a country, 

^ See "Problem of the Northmen." 



DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 81 

sometimes to a river, but uniformly to a city, and accompanied by a 
cypher indicating its place on the left bank of the river. This river 
finds its mouth between Cape Breton and Cape Arenas. The river and 
the capes have each several names. 

The detached sheet at page 55 has at its head the sketches of Alle- 
fonsce, showing his discovery that there were two Cape Bretons, of which 
the more southern, according to his relation, was in the forty-third degree. 
These sketches and the photographic fac-similes — from the manuscript 
originals in the Bibliotheque Nationale — which follow, and the relation 
that accompanies them, connect this Cape Breton with the Norumbega 
River and the city of the same name on its banks, all in the forty- third 
degree. 

The relation of Thevet, from which the sketch at the left is made, 
gives the latitude of the mouth of this river of Norumbegue — which, 
as the course of the river is east and west, is also very nearly the 
latitude of the city on its banks — as 42° 14'. His observation was made 
at the elbow of Nantasket and Hull, — the outer mouth of the Charles, — 
which, according to the Coast Survey map, is in 42° 18', and within the 
Cape of the Isles, described by himself, AUefonsce, Champlain, Thorfinn, 
and many others. 

To this cape Champlain gives on his map, 1612 (it is also a river 
on the sheet on page 55), the Indian name he found, — Chouacoet. Les- 
carbot's map of 1609 gives the same name. It is the modern Cohasset. 
Champlain also gives on his map the striking figure of the elbow at Nan- 
tasket and Hull. Thevet describes it at length, and gives it the Iroquois 
name Aiai/ascon, — a human arm. 

Beyond Boston Bay at the head of tide water, on Champlain's map as 
we can see above, is a noted angle in the Charles. Above this, at the 
site of the present Watertown, Champlain gives a cluster of houses, — 
the indication of a settlement. 

The maps that follow show the confusion in cartography that attended 
the announcement of Champlain and his companion historiographers, under 



82 DEFENCES OF NOKUMBEGA. 

De Monts, that Norumbega was not on the Charles, but if anywhere, on 
the Penobscot. 

The idea that prevailed before Champlain's time, as held by Thevet, 
was that Norumbega was between the Kennebec and Cape Cod, — or 
Mallebar. Champlain and Lescarbot, and their associates, scouted the 
idea that the place to which they were conducted as the site of the 
ancient city of Norumbega could be the true one, and stoutly held 
that the city was on the Penobscot.^ 

One of the map-makers, as we have seen, to meet the exigency, 
conceived the name of Kennebec and the Pemtagoet (the Penobscot) to 
be duplicate names of the same river. Another placed the Kennebec 
north of the Penobscot, — which would give Pemtagoet, — the place of the 
river Norumbegue, — between the Kennebec and Mallebar (Cape Cod). 

Champlain in 1632, unable to reconcile his text with what he had 
found, struck Norumbega, city and country, from his map altogether. 

Winthrop's map of 1634 gives Coneyhasset, — the Chouacoet of Cham- 
plain and Lescarbot, — and within it Nantasket, the elbow of Champlain 
and Thevet. He gives the outer and inner harbor, and at the head 
of tide water the dam and fall. 

The outline from the skeleton Coast Survey chart, with some selected 
and some added names indicating the results of discovery, closes the 
series. 

This map embraces the region of the original New France of Ver- 
razano. This New France appears on the maps at the bottom of the first 
series, page 38, in which was once a Province of Norway, and in that 
Province the city of Norumbega. 

I am not only keenly alive to the fact that there are those who doubt 
the presence in early times of a colony of Northmen in New England, 
but I am well aware also, that, whatever proof may be presented, there 

1 Fr. P. Biard wrote, before 1616, that he had sought in vain for the city. (See Letters. Maine 
Historical Society.) 



DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 83 

will continue to be men of this stamp. While my own assent to the 
proposition was long ago complete, it has consumed not a little time to 
array the evidence, which was satisfactory to myself, in such potential 
form as might meet the demands of critical examination on the part of 
others. Such arrangement is an essential condition to the study of the 
question, and may fairly be demanded. I have, as I conceive, obeyed 
the requirement. I feel that I have demonstrated the identity of the 
site of the ancient city of Norumbega with that of Watertown, on the 
river Charles, in the State of Massachusetts. 

That the Northmen, as soon as Leif and his immediate successors 
had pointed out the way and reported on the fruitfulness of the land, 
should have come from inhospitable, ice-clad Greenland to " Vineland the 
Good," abounding in corn and wine, was most natural. That most who 
came to Vineland remained, and ultimately became merged in the native 
race, might naturally have been expected. That this emigration of North- 
men (an estimated one of ten thousand) continued, to the ultimate de- 
population of Greenland, — a hitherto unsolved problem, — suggests itself 
as not improbable. As evidences of it, there are found, it is believed, 
traces of Norse life, habits, ethnological features, and language among the 
Indian tribes once here at the East, as well as among those now at the 
West, and not less at the South and North. What a field for anti- 
quarian research is opened up to one who looks out from Norumbega! 

Perhaps I ought distinctly to apologize for the numerous repetitions 
which I have been unable to escape in my effort clearly to present the 
evidence that has fallen to me. It has seemed desirable to summarize 
and present it from more than one point of view. I can see that in 
this way my paper is marred. However, in part justification I have 
only to say that my paper is intended to be simply an attempt at a 
convincing arrangement of evidence called for by the nature of the prob- 
lem, and by the critics who hold that there is little or no substantial 
evidence that the Northmen ever even set foot upon, much less that 



84 DEFENCES OF NORUMBEGA. 

they left any archaeological traces in, — such as " one stone piled upon 
another," — or colonized, any portion of the soil of the United States. 

My next paper will serve to connect the foregoing paper with the 
" Landfall of Leif and the Site of his Houses," as told in the Vineland 
Sagas. 

I am very truly yours, 

Eben Norton Hoksfoed. 

Cambridge, April, 1891. 



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